The State of AI in Design:
What we learned from 400+ designers

Over the past few years, designers have welcomed a powerful new collaborator: AI. Sometimes acting as a creative partner, other times as a helpful assistant, AI is reshaping design workflows and prompting important questions about the boundaries of human creativity.

At Foundation Capital, we’ve long  believed design holds the power to transform napkin-sketch ideas into exceptional products and enduring businesses. Since 2014, we’ve partnered closely with Designer Fund around this shared conviction, investing in extraordinary companies such as Stripe, Framer, Gusto, and Cerebras—sometimes individually, sometimes together, but always at their first, most formative stages.

This year, we joined forces with Designer Fund once again to explore AI’s impact on every dimension of design. We surveyed nearly 400 designers and spoke with leaders from companies like Anthropic, Notion, Perplexity, Zoom, and Ramp to learn what tools are being adopted, how design work is evolving, and where teams are hitting roadblocks.

Here are some of our findings:

• AI adoption is grassroots, not top-down. 96% of designers are self-taught, discovering new tools through peers, social media, and personal curiosity rather than formal organizational channels. Companies aiming to become truly “AI-first” need to provide meaningful support, not just buzzwords and mandates.
• Collaboration remains a big challenge. Most AI tools today focus on individual productivity, leaving teams to juggle prototypes shared via ephemeral links and feedback scattered across disconnected tools like Figma, Notion, and Loom.
• Startups are adopting AI twice as fast as large companies. Smaller teams benefit from curiosity, nimbleness, and the ability to integrate AI directly into workflows. Larger organizations, meanwhile, are slowed down by privacy, security, and legal hurdles, although many are actively working to cut through red tape.
• Human creativity and judgment matter more than ever. In a world where AI-generated, “good enough” output becomes commonplace, genuinely thoughtful, nuanced, and original human-crafted design becomes the true differentiator. 

Whether you’re a designer, a founder, or simply curious about what the future holds, our “State of AI in Design” report offers clarity, insight, and direction.

Explore the full findings on our dedicated microsite: www.stateofaidesign.com