Salesforce and Figma Present Two Distinct Paths for Software Investors Weighing Growth Against Scale

Enterprise software investors weighing established incumbents against fast-growing newcomers have a fresh head-to-head comparison to consider in 2026: Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) and Figma (NYSE: FIG), two application software companies that occupy different niches but increasingly compete for the same enterprise technology budgets.

Salesforce, the long-standing leader in cloud-based customer relationship management, serves a customer base exceeding 150,000 businesses worldwide. Its revenue is well diversified, with no single customer representing more than 10% of total sales. The company has been pursuing an aggressive acquisition strategy, most recently adding Fin and Qualified.com to bolster its data management and artificial intelligence capabilities, including its Agentforce platform for building and deploying enterprise-grade AI agents.

Figma, by contrast, is a younger company that has built a widely adopted, browser-based collaborative design platform used by digital product teams to design, prototype, and build digital experiences. Its growth profile is considerably steeper than that of its larger peer, though that expansion comes at a richer relative valuation — a trade-off analysts frequently highlight when comparing high-growth software names against mature incumbents.

Market action on the day reflected broader pressure across software shares. Salesforce traded at $253.92, down 0.77% from its previous close of $255.89, valuing the company at roughly $200.9 billion. Figma fell more sharply, declining 3.55% to $22.01 from a prior close of $22.82, giving it a market capitalization of approximately $11.7 billion.

Both companies are weaving artificial intelligence into their product strategies, a theme that has swept across the application software sector. Salesforce is leveraging its scale and data assets to embed AI into sales, service, and marketing workflows, while Figma’s collaborative design tools position it within the workflows of teams building AI-driven digital products.

The comparison underscores a familiar tension in software investing: proven profitability and diversified revenue at scale versus rapid expansion with a smaller — but growing — footprint. Both stocks moved lower in a session that also saw declines elsewhere in technology, including Strategy Inc (NASDAQ: MSTR), down 3.03%, and The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD), which fell 4.5%.

What to watch

• Upcoming quarterly earnings reports from both companies, particularly Figma’s revenue growth trajectory as a newly public company and Salesforce’s AI-related bookings.
• Further acquisition activity from Salesforce as it continues building out its data and AI portfolio.
• Guidance updates that indicate how enterprise software budgets are being allocated between incumbent platforms and newer design and collaboration tools.

Source: original release