PitchBook: Figma deal is the largest exit for a VC-backed company in ~20 years; source: Index Ventures' ~12% stake makes it Figma's biggest outside shareholder
Danny Rimer first invested in Figma in 2012, shortly after the company was established and began developing software tools for designers.
Context & Ripple Effects
PitchBook's ranking puts Adobe's $20B agreement to buy Figma atop two decades of VC-backed exits, and the internal distribution matters as much as the size: Index Ventures' ~12% stake — first written by Danny Rimer in 2012, shortly after the company was established — makes the firm Figma's biggest outside shareholder, so a single seed-era check defines the deal's economics.
What came after reframes the record: Adobe walked away in 2023, Figma instead raised at $12.5B on $700M+ ARR, and at its 2025 IPO the stock closed up 250% at $115.50 on a ~$68B valuation — leaving Index's sub-$100M seed worth $2.17B at the offer price. The 'largest exit' ultimately arrived by a different route than the one PitchBook was scoring.
First-order effects
- Index Ventures' ~12% stake, seeded by Danny Rimer in 2012, stands to become the firm's largest single realized gain and cements its position as Figma's dominant outside shareholder.
- Adobe's $20B commitment turns Figma's cap table — Index foremost among it — into sellers in the largest VC-backed liquidity event in roughly twenty years.
Second-order effects
- When the acquisition collapsed in 2023, the capital did not leave the asset: Coatue, Alkeon and General Catalyst stepped in at a $12.5B valuation, substituting private financing for the blocked sale.
- Index's Figma windfall compounds across a broader payoff window — the firm is positioned for $11B+ in proceeds spanning Figma's IPO, Google's Wiz acquisition and Meta's Scale AI investment — letting one vintage's gains seed the next.
Third-order effects
- Record exits measured at announcement are provisional: Figma's largest-in-two-decades tag survived Adobe's retreat and resolved only through an [[a:888611|IPO that ranked as the largest US tech venture-backed listing by market cap since Rivian's November 2021 debut]].
- Exit measurement is shifting toward asset-level tracking of individual stakes — PitchBook sizing Index's ~12% position rather than just the deal total — as fund returns concentrate in a handful of mega-positions instead of spreading across portfolios.
The trend: Venture liquidity is migrating from headline acquisitions toward longer private holds resolved by public listings, with single mega-stakes like Index's Figma position carrying entire fund vintages.