Figma’s chief financial officer Praveer Melwani told Reuters on 15 October 2026 that Figma is willing to take a hit on gross margin to grow AI use, saying he is not acutely focused on getting back to the low-90s gross margin percentage.
He spoke at Figma’s Config user conference in Bengaluru, where Figma launched Specs and opened code layers to all plans, agent features that it says consume AI credits.
Business Pill · GROSS MARGIN
A one-minute explainer of gross margin: what an AI company keeps from each dollar of revenue after the cost of delivering it. It teaches the general idea only and says nothing about any organisation in this story.
The key insight: As we read it, Figma is choosing usage over margin in public: its CFO told Reuters he would take the hit on margin to serve a much larger market, on the same day Figma shipped agent features it says consume AI credits.
“Are we going to get back to the low-90s gross margin percentage? I don’t know. But is that the thing I would be acutely focused on? No,” Melwani told the Reuters Global Markets Forum on the sidelines of the conference.
“I would be willing to take the hit on margin the same way that we did over the last year if it means that we’re able to serve a much larger total addressable market,” he said.
“What may be good for us may not always be what an investor is looking for… We know we’re going to have the ability to take price at the right point,” Melwani added.
Reuters reported that Figma’s quarterly gross profit margins have shrunk to the mid-80% range over the past year, down from above 90% historically, and that Figma’s stock is down about 43% this year.
Figma’s GAAP gross margin by quarter, computed from its 10-Q and 10-K filings: 91.5% in Q1 2025 and 83.7% in Q2 2026, as revenue rose from $228.2 million to $370.1 million.
What Was Posted on X
Today at Config India, we announced new ways of building in Figma
โ Collab with code on the canvas with Code Layers (open beta) โ Shape and share context with Specs (open beta) โ Give your agent more design system context with Guidelines (open beta) and Code Sources (closed beta) โ Ship websites with Payload (rolling out in the coming weeks)
Figma’s own summary of the Config India launches: code layers, Specs and Guidelines in open beta, Code Sources in closed beta, and Payload rolling out.
Introducing Specs! A new medium for markdown on the Figma canvas.
You can think of Specs as a container for your context. Use MCP, Github, etc to move context in/out of Figma and across the Figma platform.
Specs is rolling out in open beta over the next few weeks!
Figma listing the 20 new MCP partners announced at Config India, from Linear and Notion to Mistral and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
What Figma Filed
Figma’s own filings show the same direction. By our arithmetic from its 10-Q and 10-K figures, GAAP gross profit was 91.5% of revenue in the first quarter of 2025 and 83.7% in the second quarter of 2026.
Revenue rose over the same span, from $228.2 million to $370.1 million a quarter, according to the filings.
Reuters said spending on AI features, including the Figma design assistant and tools that create prototypes and web applications from text prompts, has helped drive revenue but weighed on margins.
What Figma Launched in Bengaluru
Figma says Specs is a native home for context that can move into, out of and across Figma, and that it is rolling out in open beta to paid plans. Using the agent with Specs consumes Figma AI credits, according to its Help Center.
Code layers, which hold real, running code on the canvas, moved into open beta on all plans. Figma says creating and editing within code layers is free through November 4, 2026 on paid plans, after which all code layer tasks will use AI credits like other agentic AI features.
Figma also said its MCP server now reduces errors and token usage, and it announced 20 new MCP partners, including Linear, Mistral, Notion and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Why Credits Matter Here
Reuters reported that Figma moved earlier this year to a usage-based pricing model for AI credits and has said the monetization effort will help deliver stronger earnings in the upcoming quarters.
As we read it, the launches and the CFO’s remarks are two sides of one model: more agent work on the canvas means more AI credits used, which Figma prices, and more modelcost, which shows up in gross margin.
The Structural Read
As we read it, the trade-off sits in the gross-margin line: Figma’s filings show GAAP gross profit at 91.5% of revenue in the first quarter of 2025 and 83.7% in the second quarter of 2026, by our arithmetic, while quarterly revenue rose from $228.2 million to $370.1 million.
As we read it, AI credits are how Figma intends to price that cost back: Reuters says Figma moved to usage-based pricing for AI credits this year, and its Help Center says Specs with the agent and code layers after November 4 use those credits.
As we read it, Melwani’s line that Figma can take price at the right point is the bet underneath: grow agent use first, then charge for it.
Praveer Melwani, Figma CFO, to the Reuters Global Markets Forum
“I would be willing to take the hit on margin the same way that we did over the last year if it means that we’re able to serve a much larger total addressable market”
Three Implications
FIGMA CUSTOMERS ON PAID PLANS Figma says code layers are free to create and edit through November 4, 2026, after which code layer tasks use AI credits like other agentic AI features.
FIGMA INVESTORS Reuters reported that worries over shrinking margins and AI-driven disruption have dragged Figma’s stock down about 43% this year.
AGENT AND TOOL MAKERS Figma announced 20 new MCP partners, including Linear, Mistral, Notion and Microsoft 365 Copilot, and says its MCP server now reduces errors and token usage.
The framework puts it this way: the new job of finance is to manage the ratio between work produced and tokens burned, and “That ratio is the gross-margin equation of the agentic era.”
As we read it, Figma’s CFO is describing that equation from the seller’s side: more agent work per customer, priced through AI credits, with gross margin as the line that moves while the ratio settles.
Figma’s quarterly revenue from its 10-Q and 10-K filings: $228.2 million in Q1 2025 to $370.1 million in Q2 2026 (Q4 2025 derived from the 10-K less nine months).
What Is Not Established
Figma has not said what share of its cost of revenue comes from AI inference, and Melwani gave no margin target. Our margin figures are GAAP, computed from the filed revenue and gross profit; quarters can include items other than AI costs, and Reuters’ mid-80% description may use a different measure.
Figma has not said how many credits Specs or code layers will use in practice; its Help Center says consumption varies with task complexity and the context the agent consumes.
Business Engineer Framework
The CFO’s Guide to the Token Economy
A Business Engineer framework on why the gross-margin equation of the agentic era is work produced per token burned.
Figma’s CFO told Reuters on 15 October 2026 that he would be willing to take the hit on margin to serve a much larger market, and said he is not acutely focused on getting back to low-90s gross margins.
The same day Figma launched Specs and opened code layers, agent features it says consume AI credits, with code layers free on paid plans through November 4, 2026.
95,000+ executives read Business Engineer for the AI strategy frameworks cited by ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.
A note on sourcing. We read Reuters’ interview with Figma’s CFO in full in a same-day syndication, Figma’s own blog post and Help Center article on its Config India launches, and the @figma and @zoink posts on X. The gross-margin percentages are our arithmetic from the revenue and gross profit in Figma’s 10-Q and 10-K filings, on a GAAP basis. Figma has not disclosed its AI inference costs.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
