💬 Four billion-dollar design acquisitions happened in 2025

Some big news from the design world.

Four major acquisitions happened in 2025:

➡️ ($610M) Shopify bought Molly Studio (Aug 2025)

All 7 designers from the NYC studio that worked with Apple, Nike, Google. They're now Shopify's new "AI-first" Product Design Studio.

➡️ ($6.5B) OpenAI bought Jony Ive's "io" (May-Jul 2025)

OpenAI's biggest acquisition ever. LoveFrom stays independent but now leads all OpenAI design.

➡️ ($610M) Atlassian bought Browser Company (Sep 2025)

The makers of Arc and Dia browsers. Building the "AI browser for knowledge workers."

➡️ Accenture bought Yumemi (May 2025, undisclosed)

400+ Japanese designers with their "design engineering" methodology. Powers 60M monthly users.

Here's what this actually means for us:

Design is becoming strategic infrastructure. Like, actual business-critical infrastructure.

Companies are buying entire design cultures and AI-native workflows. The studios that got acquired? They all cracked the code on designing FOR AI, not just WITH AI.

The opportunity is massive.

We're architecting how humans interact with AI. That's the new game.

❓What AI design ideas have you been thinking about?

________

📁 Sources:

2 comments

skool.com/ai-design-club

Master AI Workflows as a Designer. Get Seen More, Get Paid More.

Leaderboard (30-day)

+91

+12

🔥

+10

+10