The surprise winner of Figma IPO is a charity with 13 million actions – and a famous background frame which sparked a bitter quarrel on the oil fortune of a donor

But the largest winner in terms of immediate profit-in-law profits is not renowned venture capital companies of Silicon Valley such as Index Ventures, Greylock, and Kleiner Perkins, who only sold small flares of their holdings in the offer. Nor is it the FIGMA management team, including CEO Dylan Field, which has most of its actions locked up in the company.

Instead, a charity based in Novato, California, won the largest payment. The Marine Community Foundation, located an hour north of San Francisco and focused on subsidies on issues such as education, health, economic opportunities and environmental concerns, has sold more than 13.4 million actions of the offer, which makes it the largest sales shareholder (Figma itself sold only 12.5 million shares).

While Figma initially estimated its actions at $ 33 per POP, the Marine Community Foundation sold its participation in more than $ 440 million. (If he had waited, of course, this participation was now worth more than a billion dollars.)

The charitable organization received its actions in Figma during the summer of Evan Wallace, the unusable co -founder of the company, a familiar source told the case. It is not necessarily a common practice just before a company was published in public, said another source in Fortune, but which is from time to time that appears from time to time – a founder with a link with a charitable organization giving actions with the rise. There are adjacent examples of the past, notably Mark Zuckerberg in 2013 by giving a billion dollars in Facebook sharing at Silicon Valley Community Foundation (although Zuck’s gift occurred after the 2012 Facebook IPO)))

An MCF spokesperson described the Foundation as “one of the largest community foundations in the United States”, adding “that a community foundation is a public charitable organization that manages the philanthropy of individuals, families and institutions”. The spokesperson refused to comment on everything that is specific about the Figma’s gift, citing his privacy policy concerning individual donors or non-profit organizations.

Why Wallace made the gift to the Foundation and if he has a personal link with him, is not clear. Figma refused to provide a comment in the name of Wallace, and Fortune could not reach it directly. Dylan Field co -founded the Wallace and Figma company co -founded the company after meeting as a student at Brown University. Wallace moved away from Figma in 2021 and tended to stay outside the public eye.

The part of the charitable organization to which Wallace has given the actions-the MCF gift fund-suggests that the subsidy of the co-founder of Figma can involve a so-called fund advised by donors, a tax structure which is a tax structure by which a rich person puts money in a homeless and is then able to direct the funds towards various causes. The spokesperson for the Marine Community Foundation said that the MCF gift fund “facilitates the acceptance of complex gifts which can be transformed into philanthropic capital to allow donors to achieve their philanthropic ambitions.”

But the philanthropical movement of the founder of Figma has a historic wrinkle that makes it even more interesting…

Before AI money, there was oil money

Interestingly, the County Foundation sailor, which had about $ 2.8 billion in total assets at the end of 2024, is in itself the product of a previous generation of large companies – and a bitter legal struggle and several years for the control of money.

The history of the Foundation returns to Beryl and Leonard Buck, whose wealth was linked to an investment in Belridge Oil. When Beryl Buck died in 1975, she gave money to the San Francisco Foundation, with the wish that he was used for causes in the county of Marin, where she had lived in the city of Tony de Ross. But when the oil giant Shell bought the rights to Belridge Oil four years later for more than $ 3.6 billion, the value of the trust of $ 7.6 million suddenly was worth 240 million dollars ($ 1 billion in the dollars today), and the SF Foundation has become the 11th largest foundation in the United States.

The problem, as the SF Foundation explains, was that “we found ourselves in the uncomfortable position to grant tens of millions of dollars each year (much more than what we have given to all the other Combined counties) to the richest county in the Bay region.”

Or as a history of the La Times noted at the time, one of the country’s most appreciated charitable organizations was stuck in search of means of spending all the money in the “hot capital of America”.

Douug Penser / Getty images

When the foundation went to court to request permission to spend part of the money in other more necessary parts of the bay region, a storm of public fire ensued. This decision was “characterized as a threat to the sacred character of the wills and the health of philanthropy, and as an offense against capitalism, the American way of life and God”, wrote the professor of the law of law of Yale John G. Simon on the case. “The staff of the Foundation would have been corrupt and dishonest and, in the language of a sailor’s county supervisor,” bastards of grave. »»

In the end, the San Francisco Foundation lost its legal battle and a new organization – the Marin Community Foundation – was created in 1986 to administer the Buck Trust.

Now, 39 years later, the County Foundation sailor obtains another massive windfall. That Wallace is aware of the controversial and famous history behind the foundation he chose is a mystery. But, with its reclusive co -founder, the co -founder of Figma managed to put the foundation back in the headlines at the dawn of another historical moment in the history of business and the creation of wealth.