Design-software developer Figma began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday after pricing its initial public offering at $33 a share, raising about $1.2 billion and giving the company an opening valuation near $19.3 billion. Investor demand pushed the stock sharply higher from the outset: indications on the floor pointed to a debut in the high-$90s, the shares were briefly halted at $93.50, and they later touched roughly $113—an advance of about 240% that lifted Figma’s market capitalisation to an estimated $55-60 billion. The explosive first-day gain is one of the largest for a U.S. technology offering in recent years and underscores renewed appetite for venture-backed listings after a prolonged lull. It also revives debate over the traditional IPO process, with commentators noting that the deal was about 30-times oversubscribed and retail platforms allocated only token amounts to most applicants. Figma’s listing caps a turnaround for the San Francisco-based company less than two years after Adobe abandoned a $20 billion takeover under regulatory pressure. Chief Executive Officer Dylan Field, who controls roughly three-quarters of the firm’s voting power and owns about 61 million shares, told CNBC that advances in generative AI do not pose an immediate threat to the platform’s collaborative design tools.