Anthropic CPO Quits Figma Board Over Rival Product
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- Mike Krieger, Anthropic's chief product officer, resigned from Figma's board on April 14, with the departure disclosed to the SEC the same day The Information reported Anthropic's next model, Opus 4.7, will include design tools that could compete with Figma's primary product.
- Figma, a publicly traded company valued at $10 billion, develops popular interface design tools for UX designers and has collaborated closely with Anthropic to integrate its frontier AI models into Figma products as user assistants.
- Krieger co-founded Instagram and the AI-powered news app Artifact before becoming Anthropic's top product executive in 2024; he joined Figma's board less than a year ago.
- The departure feeds the 'SaaSpocalypse' thesis rattling public software markets — iShares's primary software ETF (IGV) is down nearly 18% year-to-date on fears that the largest AI labs will come to dominate software businesses.
- Anthropic is turning down investors seeking to buy in at an $800 billion valuation, more than double the figure from its most recent funding round at the start of the year.
- Figma's stock is up 5% since Krieger's departure was disclosed, though the source flags the next Opus release as the real test of whether the market stays relaxed.
Why it matters: Figma, despite a $10 billion valuation and an existing Anthropic partnership, now faces direct competition from a partner whose next AI model includes overlapping design tools. The departure crystallizes the 'SaaSpocalypse' thesis already knocking iShares's software ETF (IGV) down nearly 18% year-to-date, and the market's 5% Figma stock bump suggests investors are waiting for Opus 4.7 to judge whether the threat is real.
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