When Figma priced its initial public offering at a valuation north of $19 billion in the summer of 2025—with shares briefly pushing the company’s market capitalization toward $68 billion on the first day of trading—it revived a fight that had lain dormant since Adobe abandoned its $20 billion bid for the company in December 2023. Lina Khan, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission whose scrutiny during her tenure (alongside those from European and British regulators) helped kill that deal, took a victory lap, framing the offering as proof of the value of letting startups grow into independently successful businesses rather than folding them into incumbents. Vinod Khosla, the Sun Microsystems co-founder and a venture capitalist unaffiliated with Figma, was not persuaded. He shot back on X that Khan was in no position to override the judgment of founders, employees, and investors. He also accused her of falling into “retrospective predictability“: the claim of foresight for an outcome that was only obvious after the fact. READ MORE