Figma puts code and AI plugins on its canvas, but rents the AI behind them

A designer clones a repository, pulls a working application flow straight onto the canvas, where until then they had only drawn frames, and tests it next to the design. Without a terminal, without handing the code to an engineer. This became possible with the code layers feature, which Figma unveiled on 24 June at Config 2026 in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, where tickets reportedly sold out. Along with it, the canvas gained native animations, shaders built from a text prompt, and the building of custom plugins.

Executable code, animations and shaders on one canvas

Code layers are interactive elements built on their own React code and placed directly into the shared canvas. A team can clone a repository, pull finished flows out of the code and test them beside the design. A step that for over ten years separated design from development now collapses into a single space. An element can be created by converting an existing component, by building it in conversation with an assistant, or by hand-editing in a code editor.

“We think the multiplayer canvas is really powerful because this is an environment where you don’t really care about the quality of the code,” said, according to TechCrunch, Yuhki Yamashita, Figma’s Chief Product Officer. According to him, code layers change how designers, product managers and engineers work together on ideas.

The canvas also gained native support for animations, transitions and 3D transformations. A designer previously had to create motion in an external tool and convert it into code that Figma understands. Shaders can now be generated from a prompt too. The feature is built on WebGPU and generates effects such as dithering, pixelation and various types of blur, as well as surfaces resembling frosted glass or polished chrome. Previously this required knowledge of graphics programming.

Plugins and skills from a text brief

Users describe what they need, and Figma builds the plugin itself. The example in the report was “a layout generator or a vector path tracer”. The same logic produces repeatable skills for the design assistant, saved as a command such as /contrast-improvements and shared across the team. The assistant can now connect to Notion, Granola, Excel and GitHub and draw context from them. Generating workflows in Figma Weave directly on the canvas is due later in 2026.

Weave is based on Weavy, a startup that Figma acquired on 30 October 2025. The Tel Aviv company, founded in 2024, brought twenty people with it and combines different AI models for creating images and videos into product mock-ups and brand style.

Models run on other companies’ technology

Canvas features run on models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Figma rents them, while Anthropic is building its own competing design tool, Claude Design. The costs of inference at scale feed into the margin. Gross margin fell during 2025 from 92% to 86%, and according to management it has settled at this level.

Growth is not slowing for now. Revenue reached $303.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 40% year on year, and for the full year the company passed $1 billion for the first time. Since March it has moved to metered AI credits beyond the subscription. Seventy-five percent of paying customers with annual revenue above $10,000 use them weekly, and the Figma Make tool is used weekly by more than half of customers with ARR above $100,000.

“As AI gets better, Figma gets better,” said CEO Dylan Field. He bases his bet on human judgement on the limits of models, which, in his view, cannot even handle “div centered”, and do not understand aesthetics, UX or a simple decision. The company is tackling cost pressure through a tighter link between code and design. According to the report, the CodeConnect tool reduces inference consumption by roughly 30%.

The European context and competition

A major player once tried to acquire Figma already. Adobe announced an acquisition worth $20 billion and abandoned it on 18 December 2023 after an in-depth review by European and British regulators, saying there was “no clear path” to their approval. The European Commission and the British CMA both opened a phase 2 investigation over concerns about competition in the market for product design tools.

The European alternative remains open source. Penpot, from the Madrid company Kaleidos, runs on open web standards, is hosted in the EU and is offered for free, including for self-hosting on your own servers. After Adobe announced its acquisition, Penpot’s sign-ups jumped by 5,600% and the company raised $8 million.

The canvas now holds the idea, the code and the motion in one place, and the handover between design and development is getting thinner. Figma names judgement and taste as its differentiator, while buying its model layer from companies that themselves supply competing design tools.