Collaboration all but requires being online (good offline collab is much harder to implement as you surely know), so that eliminates one of the main advantages of native apps.

Collaboration is also much more useful when you're not limited to only working with people using the same OS. Multi-platform distribution is built into web apps, but it takes a lot more effort to create good native apps on several platforms.

Also, of course, no need to install anything on the web, which is important for frictionless collaboration.

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It's no surprise that both desktop and mobile OS-s are very much not optimized for cross platform development. It's a feature (for owners of those OS-s), not a bug.

If I recall correctly, Figma's entire UI is C++ compiled down to webassembly.

If they went to the trouble to write it in C++ why use the browser instead of QT?

Exactly for the sharing features people have been discussing. It may be OK for the design team to download the app, but product managers, devs, marketers and other stakeholders don't want to also have to go through the trouble of downloading the app.

A primary thing Figma understood better than pretty much anyone else is how collaboration among different teams (not just design) works in product development.

I’d imagine zero-install was a big thing

And Rust

Yes they run it in web assembly