Figma Stock Jumps 7% Following Altman’s ChatGPT Integration Praise

Shares of Figma (FIG) experienced a 7% surge on Monday, fueled by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s demonstration of its technology integration within ChatGPT at the company’s annual DevDay conference in San Francisco. This endorsement underscores the increasing convergence of design and artificial intelligence, potentially reshaping the workflows of millions of product developers and designers.

Altman showcased how Figma can be seamlessly integrated into ChatGPT, highlighting the potential of third-party applications leveraging OpenAI’s Apps SDK. This integration promises to enhance the ChatGPT user experience for its 800 million monthly active users.

“When someone’s using ChatGPT, you’ll be able to find an app by asking for it by name,” Altman explained. “For example, you could sketch out a product flow for ChatGPT and then say, Figma, turn this sketch into a workable diagram. The Figma app will take over respond and complete the action.”

Figma’s product manager, Luke Zhang, elaborated in a blog post that ChatGPT’s assistant can also proactively suggest Figma’s assistance when contextually relevant, further streamlining the user experience. This proactive integration, powered by sophisticated AI, signals a deeper level of collaboration between the two platforms. This integration demonstrates a synergy where AI augments the design process, enabling teams to rapidly iterate and visualize complex product flows.

The surge in Figma’s stock price was its most significant single-day increase since its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in July, reflecting investor confidence in the company’s strategic direction and the potential of its AI-driven integrations.

Figma has been increasingly focused on developing its own suite of tools that leverage generative AI models from OpenAI and other providers to streamline app and website design workflows. This commitment to AI-powered features is a key differentiator in the increasingly competitive design software market. The company’s investments in generative AI models allows designers to automate repetitive tasks such as layout generation, asset creation, and content suggestions, which potentially improves productivity and accelerates the design cycle.

Altman emphasized that users of Apps SDK-connected products will benefit from a seamless login experience within their ChatGPT conversations. He also noted that teams working on products within Figma can seamlessly launch FigJam to further develop their ideas, thereby fostering continuous collaboration. Apps SDK leverages the Model Context Protocol, an open standard initially introduced by OpenAI competitor Anthropic, indicating a growing trend towards interoperability in the AI ecosystem.

Software developers will have the opportunity to submit their applications for review later in 2025, paving the way for a wider range of AI-powered integrations within ChatGPT.

Over the long term, OpenAI plans to offer diverse avenues for revenue generation through these third-party integrations. This strategy aims to create a sustainable ecosystem of AI-powered tools and services, benefiting both developers and end-users. The long-term monetization strategy for these integrations is crucial for the continued investment in AI and its integration with design workflows.

Last week, OpenAI unveiled a feature enabling users to purchase products listed on Etsy through ChatGPT, further highlighting the platform’s expanding capabilities as a commerce facilitator. This move by OpenAI points to the expanding role of AI in e-commerce and its potential to revolutionize the online shopping experience.