Could Investing $10,000 in Figma Make You a Millionaire?

Are you an investor who constantly keeps your eyes peeled for the next big thing? If so, Figma (NYSE: FIG) has likely made its way onto your radar. The company's digital prototyping and collaboration platform is creating quite the buzz among web designers, app developers, and businesses that just need a way of sharing visual ideas with their employees. It boasts over 15,000 paying customers, and did over $1 billion in business last year, up 41% from 2024's tally.

Investors of course appreciated that growth.

If you think this progress puts Figma shares on a trajectory that will eventually turn a $10,000 investment into a seven-figure sum, however, think again. There's something most of this ticker's bulls aren't considering.

What's Figma?

Figma's technology allows multiple users to simultaneously build, edit, and even test visual user interfaces for mobile apps, web pages, and presentation slide decks. It's not unlike Slack, Monday.com (NASDAQ: MNDY), Dropbox, or several business-team solutions from Google or Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) in that regard, but Figma's prototyping tools are seemingly better than any alternative even if they're strictly for the purpose of creating the right look, and don't actually test an app's or website's functionality. Again, it's got thousands of customers, and is obviously growing its top line. There's a reason.

There's also a reason, however, this stock continues to peel back from its post-initial public offering (IPO) surge to $122 in July last year, and it's not just the fact that the hype surrounding this company (and most technology stocks) at the time was crazy. This ticker is losing ground because enough investors innately realize this company's got no defensible moat surrounding its business.

One gaping flaw

Think about it. You can trademark a name, copyright a creative work, and patent a process or invention. But there's nothing to prevent a rival like the aforementioned Microsoft or Monday.com from adding a tool to their existing menu of offerings that does precisely what Figma's platform does. In fact, Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) already offers such a solution, called Adobe XD. So does Penpot. Open-source options like Uizard are also a threat. The software industry's biggest players that don't yet have such a solution are also almost certainly working on one.

Image source: Getty Images.

None of this is to suggest that Figma is doomed, for the record. It may well make a go of it, by virtue of being the best in the business and commanding a premium price for its product, like Palantir does in the decision-intelligence space. Never say never.

Ironically though, the more successful Figma becomes by serving this sliver of the digital design market, the more competition it invites to the space that it can't fend off.

In the meantime, its losses are getting bigger rather than smaller as revenue grows, thanks to soaring operating costs like research and development (R&D) and selling/marketing. The company appears to simply be buying revenue growth, and not even cost-effectively.

Just not enough longevity, but...

Bottom line? Figma shares may see a few years of gains stemming from the company's top-line progress. The likelihood of this stock experiencing the 10,000% return needed to turn $10,000 into anything close to $1 million, however, is pretty low. You'd do well get a fourth of that out of this name before running out of steam, particularly in light of the company's sizable current market cap of $10 billion.

Still, that wouldn't be the worst result for a somewhat speculative holding like this one.

James Brumley has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Adobe, Alphabet, Dropbox, Figma, Microsoft, Monday.com, and Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2028 $330 calls on Adobe and short January 2028 $340 calls on Adobe. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.