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Why Figma CEO Dylan Field Says Design Matters Most in the AI Era
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CNBC TV18•16-10-2026, 22:06
Why Figma CEO Dylan Field Says Design Matters Most in the AI Era
  • •Figma CEO Dylan Field believes that as artificial intelligence makes coding easier and a commodity, brand, point of view, and design will become the primary differentiators for businesses.
  • •The company is expanding beyond collaborative design by introducing AI-powered tools like Code Layers and Make to bridge the gap between design and coding on a single platform.
  • •India is currently Figma's second-largest market by daily active users, with the company actively expanding its local team to better serve customers and enterprises.
  • •Figma is positioning itself to help professional teams and businesses achieve specific outcomes, distinguishing itself from tools focused purely on first-time app builders.
  • •Field acknowledged that adequate AI safety guardrails are still evolving and called on tech companies to collaborate on solving specific AI challenges more rapidly.

Key Questions Answered

Dylan Field believes that while AI makes software production easier, it causes a growing gap between applications created and those actually used. In this environment, standing out depends heavily on design, brand identity, craft, and understanding what products are truly worth building.

India is Figma's second-largest market by daily active users, and the company is scaling up its presence to support existing customers and strengthen customer-facing functions. While product development in India may happen in the future, the current priority is serving local customers, adapting to requirements like multilingual and voice interfaces, and building relationships.

Code Layers brings code directly onto Figma's canvas and connects to GitHub repositories, allowing designers, product managers, and researchers to create prototypes and contribute to codebases without using an intimidating terminal or IDE. This allows non-developers to experiment with professional workflows in a visual environment.