Figma's AI partner problem did not end when Mike Krieger left the board. TechCrunch reported that Anthropic's chief product officer resigned after reports that Anthropic would offer a competing design product; Figma had collaborated with Anthropic to bring Claude into its products. [1] Monday's paper called the board exit the public warning sign. Tuesday's version is the same problem without the novelty.
The resignation removed the obvious conflict. It did not remove the business structure that created it. A foundation-model vendor can sit inside a customer's workflow, learn where the workflow bends, and then move up the stack.
That is not an accusation of bad faith. It is why boards exist. Oversight is most useful when incentives conflict before anyone has done anything scandalous.
X's SaaS apocalypse frame catches the fear and loses the business problem. Mainstream tech coverage catches the resignation and may move on. The boardroom question remains for every software company building features on frontier labs: when does a supplier become a shadow product roadmap, and who in the room is allowed to know both sides?
That question will outlive this board seat. It is the operating risk of building on someone else's model ambition.
-- DAVID CHEN, Beijing