Adobe Inc. has named Anil Chakravarthy as its next President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective December 1, 2026. He will succeed Shantanu Narayen, who will move to the role of Executive Chair, and will also join the Board of Directors. The change puts an enterprise software and cloud specialist in charge at a time when Adobe is racing to lead in generative and agentic artificial intelligence (AI).
What Is the Latest Announcement on Adobe Leadership Change?
The Board of Directors of Adobe Inc. appointed Anil Chakravarthy as the next President and Chief Executive Officer on September 2, 2026. The company publicly announced the decision on September 3, 2026, from its headquarters in San Jose, California. The appointment takes effect on December 1, 2026, and Chakravarthy will also join the Board on the same date.
Chakravarthy currently serves as President of Customer Experience Orchestration business and worldwide field operations at Adobe. A CEO is the highest ranking executive in a company and is responsible for overall strategy and daily operations, while the Board of Directors is the elected group that guides and oversees the company on behalf of shareholders.
Outgoing CEO Shantanu Narayen will retire as CEO on December 1 and assume the position of Executive Chair of the Board. In this role, he will work closely with Chakravarthy to ensure a smooth handover and support the next phase of change at the company. Narayen had announced on March 12, 2026 that he would step down once a successor was named, after serving as CEO since 2007.
The Board had set up a special committee led by lead independent director Frank Calderoni to consider both internal and external candidates. After that process, the Board unanimously selected Chakravarthy, who has worked at Adobe since January 2020 and already leads its enterprise business and global sales operations.
Who Is Anil Chakravarthy, the New Adobe CEO?
Anil Chakravarthy is an Indian origin technology executive with about three decades of experience in consulting, cybersecurity, enterprise software and cloud services. He will be the second Indian origin leader to head Adobe after Shantanu Narayen. His strength is transformation of older software businesses into cloud and subscription based companies, a skill the Board has highlighted as central to Adobe’s future in AI driven software.
Education: From Bengaluru to Varanasi to MIT
Chakravarthy completed his early schooling in Bengaluru, including studies at Sudarshan Vidya Mandir, Vijaya High School in Jayanagar and National College in Basavanagudi. He then earned a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from the Institute of Technology, Varanasi, which is now known as the Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) or IIT (BHU). He graduated in 1989.
He later moved to the United States for higher studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At MIT, he earned both a Master of Science and a Ph.D., completing his doctorate in 1995. This combination of Indian engineering training and advanced research in the United States shaped his early career as both an engineer and a business strategist.
Career Journey Before Adobe
Chakravarthy began his professional career at McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm, where he worked from 1995 to 2000 and rose to co-leader of the E-Business Practice in its Silicon Valley office. He then moved into product roles, serving as Vice President of Marketing at Logictier and as Director of Product Management for enterprise security services at VeriSign from 2001 to 2004.
He spent nearly a decade at Symantec Corporation, a cybersecurity company, where he held several senior posts and finally served as Executive Vice President of Information Security. In that role he oversaw engineering, product management and operations for products covering data loss prevention, email and web security, endpoint protection, encryption and storage. He also headed Symantec’s India product operations, which gave him direct experience of running large technology teams in India.
The biggest turning point came at Informatica, a company that builds enterprise cloud data management software. Chakravarthy joined Informatica in 2013 as Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer. He became its Chief Executive Officer from 2015 to 2020 and led the shift from one time software licences to cloud and subscription services. During this period the company expanded products such as Informatica v10 and Informatica Big Data Management and grew its recurring subscription revenue to more than $1 billion, a model based on customers paying regularly for continued use rather than paying once.
Role Inside Adobe Since 2020
Chakravarthy joined Adobe in January 2020 as Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Digital Experience business. This unit, also called Adobe Experience Cloud, helps large companies manage customer data, run marketing campaigns and deliver personalised experiences across websites, apps and other channels. By the end of 2020 he also took charge of worldwide field operations, which means he led Adobe’s global enterprise sales and customer engagement teams.
He was elevated to President of Digital Experience in December 2021 and held that post till January 2026, when he moved to the newly created role of President of Customer Experience Orchestration business. He has also carried responsibilities similar to a Chief Operating Officer, representing all of Adobe across creativity, document productivity and customer experience with large business clients. Outside Adobe, he has served as an independent board member of FIS (Fidelity National Information Services), and earlier on the boards of Ansys Inc. and USAA Federal Savings Bank.
Who Is Shantanu Narayen and What Is His Legacy?
Shantanu Narayen, born on May 27, 1963 in Hyderabad, India, led Adobe as CEO for more than 18 years, from 2007 to 2026. He grew up in Hyderabad and studied at the Hyderabad Public School in Begumpet, the same school attended by other well known technology leaders. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering from the University College of Engineering, Osmania University in Hyderabad. He then earned a master’s degree in computer science from Bowling Green State University in Ohio in 1986 and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley in 1993.
Before Adobe, Narayen worked at Measurex Automation Systems, then at Apple Inc. from 1989 to 1995 in product development, and later at Silicon Graphics as director of desktop and collaboration products. In 1996 he co-founded Pictra Inc., an early startup for sharing digital photos over the internet. He joined Adobe in 1998 as vice president and general manager and rose through senior leadership roles before becoming CEO in succession to Bruce Chizen.
Under Narayen, Adobe changed from a company selling boxed software with one time payments to a cloud subscription company. He led the launch of Adobe Creative Cloud in 2012, a subscription bundle that includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, Lightroom and Acrobat. He also expanded Adobe into marketing software through Adobe Experience Cloud and document services through Adobe Document Cloud, which is built around the Portable Document Format (PDF). In March 2023 Adobe launched Firefly, its family of generative AI models trained on licensed and public domain content, which allows business users to create images, video and other content with legal protection for commercial use.
Narayen received the Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian award, in 2019 for his contribution to trade and industry. He also serves on the board of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. His attempted $20 billion acquisition of Figma, a browser based design platform, was called off in December 2023 after regulatory objections, with Adobe paying a $1 billion breakup fee. As Executive Chair from December 2026, he will continue to guide the Board while supporting Chakravarthy’s transition.
What Is Adobe Inc.?
Adobe Inc., earlier called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational software company headquartered at 345 Park Avenue, San Jose, California. It was founded in December 1982 in Mountain View, California by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who had earlier worked at Xerox PARC. The company is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the symbol ADBE and is part of the Nasdaq 100 and S and P 500 indices.
Adobe first became famous for PostScript, a language that helped start desktop publishing, and for the Portable Document Format (PDF), a file format that preserves the look of a document on any device. Its flagship creative products include Photoshop for photo editing, Illustrator for vector drawings, InDesign for publishing, Premiere Pro for video editing and Acrobat for creating and managing PDFs. The company also runs large India offices, including centres in Noida and Bengaluru.
Adobe organises its business into three main clouds, which are simply groups of subscription software delivered over the internet.
| Business Group | What It Offers | Key Products |
|---|---|---|
| Creative Cloud | Tools for design, photo, video and illustration | Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, InDesign, Firefly |
| Document Cloud | Tools to create, sign and share documents | Acrobat, Acrobat Sign, PDF services |
| Experience Cloud | Software for marketing, data and customer journeys | Experience Platform, Experience Manager, GenStudio, Analytics |
For the financial year ending November 2025, Adobe reported revenue of about $23.77 billion and employed about 31,360 people worldwide. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, the company reported record revenue of $6.76 billion and said monthly active users across all its products had crossed 1 billion for the first time.
Why Does This Leadership Change Matter for Adobe?
The appointment comes at a difficult moment for Adobe’s core creative business. Low cost and AI native tools from rivals such as Canva, Figma, OpenAI and Google now allow users to create designs, images and videos with simple text prompts. This has reduced the value of special skills and put pressure on Adobe’s traditional strength in professional tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator. Adobe shares fell about 19 percent in the early part of 2026 as investors worried that AI could weaken subscription income.
Adobe has responded with its own AI platform, Adobe Firefly, and with agentic AI, which means software agents that can complete multi step tasks on their own, such as planning a campaign, editing images and publishing content without step by step human input. Products such as GenStudio, Firefly Services and CX Enterprise Coworker for marketing teams are part of this push. By the third quarter of fiscal 2026, AI first annual recurring revenue, which is yearly subscription income from AI focused products, had crossed $650 million with growth of more than 150 percent over the previous year.
Chakravarthy’s background fits this next shift. Just as he moved Informatica from one time licences to subscriptions, Adobe must now move from charging mainly for each user seat to charging for AI usage and outcomes while keeping its large subscriber base. At the same time, he must fill near term gaps, as finance chief Dan Durn left in June 2026 and David Wadhwani, President of the Creativity and Productivity business and another internal CEO contender, decided to step down effective September 27, 2026. The success of Chakravarthy’s early tenure will therefore be judged on whether Firefly and agentic tools can deliver steady subscription growth without losing creative users to cheaper rivals.
Key Takeaways
- Anil Chakravarthy will become President and CEO of Adobe Inc. on December 1, 2026 and will also join the Board of Directors.
- Outgoing CEO Shantanu Narayen, who led Adobe from 2007 to 2026, will become Executive Chair of the Board.
- Chakravarthy holds a B.Tech from IIT (BHU), Varanasi and an MS and Ph.D. from MIT.
- He served as CEO of Informatica from 2015 to 2020 and joined Adobe in January 2020 as head of the Digital Experience business.
- Adobe Inc. was founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke and is headquartered in San Jose, California.
- Adobe’s AI platform Firefly crossed $650 million in AI first annual recurring revenue in Q3 FY2026 with growth of over 150 percent.
