The Haas M.B.A. who ran Adobe for nearly two decades hands the job to Anil Chakravarthy on Dec. 1, after a record quarter, a new Nvidia deal and a stock that investors have punished over artificial intelligence.
For most of the past two decades, the answer to “who runs Adobe?” has been the same. On Dec. 1, it changes. Shantanu Narayen, who became the San Jose software company’s chief executive in 2007, will turn the role over to Anil Chakravarthy, who most recently led Adobe’s customer experience orchestration business and worldwide field operations, and become executive chair.
The company announced the succession on Sept. 3, six months after Mr. Narayen said he planned to step aside, and described it in a Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Chakravarthy will also join the board. Frank Calderoni, Adobe’s lead independent director, led the search committee.
“Adobe’s opportunity ahead is limitless with our track record in creating new market categories and world-class products,” Mr. Narayen said in the announcement. “I could not be more confident that Anil is the right person to lead Adobe’s growth in an AI-driven era and look forward to working closely with him in my new role as executive chair.”
A Berkeley evening student
Mr. Narayen’s path to Adobe ran through Berkeley. Born in Hyderabad, India, he earned a bachelor’s degree at Osmania University and a master’s in computer science at Bowling Green State University in Ohio before moving to Silicon Valley. He took his M.B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in 1993, studying in the school’s evening program while working at Apple. Haas has since claimed him as one of its best-known graduates; its newsroom identifies him as “Shantanu Narayen, MBA 93” in reporting on his 2011 appointment to President Barack Obama’s Management Advisory Board.
He joined Adobe in 1998, became president and chief operating officer in 2005, chief executive in 2007 and chairman in 2017. He also sits on the board of Pfizer.
The record he leaves
Mr. Narayen’s tenure is defined by Adobe’s move from boxed software to subscriptions through Creative Cloud, a shift that made it one of the most valuable software companies in the world. The company’s latest results show the business he hands over is still growing. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, which ended Aug. 28, Adobe reported record revenue of $6.76 billion, up 13 percent from a year earlier, and GAAP earnings of $4.62 a share, or $6.13 on an adjusted basis. It said annualized recurring revenue reached $27.50 billion, that its products had passed one billion monthly active users and that recurring revenue from its “AI-first” products had grown more than 150 percent.
For the fourth quarter, Adobe forecast revenue of $6.80 billion to $6.85 billion. Those results are expected after the handoff.
The market’s verdict
Investors have been less impressed. As CNBC reported on the day of the announcement, Adobe’s shares fell 25 percent in 2024 and 21 percent in 2025, and were down 18 percent for 2026 at that point, amid investor concerns that artificial intelligence will disrupt software makers. CNBC also reported that David Wadhwani, president of Adobe’s creativity and productivity business and once seen as a contender for the top job, was leaving the company. Mr. Wadhwani had played a key role in Adobe’s bid to acquire the design software maker Figma, a deal the companies called off in 2023 because of regulatory hurdles.
Adobe’s answer has been to fold AI into its own products, led by its Firefly models, and to court partners. On Oct. 15, Adobe and Nvidia announced an expanded collaboration under which Photoshop, Premiere and Substance 3D are being optimized for Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip, with what the companies said would be up to twice the speed for AI processing, editing and effects. The companies also said Nvidia technology would accelerate the Frame.io video collaboration service and that Adobe’s Brand Concierge, an AI agent for businesses, would run on Nvidia’s Nemotron open models. The deal builds on a partnership the companies announced in March. Adobe’s annual MAX conference, the company’s largest yearly event, is scheduled for Nov. 10 to 12, three weeks before the transition.
The successor
Mr. Chakravarthy spent four years as chief executive of Informatica, the enterprise data management company, before joining Adobe nearly seven years ago, according to CNBC. Adobe credits him with scaling its Adobe Experience Platform, which sells customer data and marketing software to businesses, and with championing the acquisition and integration of Workfront and Semrush. Steve Day, a senior vice president, is serving as Adobe’s interim chief financial officer.
A routine filing
The final weeks have also produced the ordinary paperwork of a long-serving executive. A Form 4 filed Oct. 19 shows that on Oct. 15, 8,300 of Mr. Narayen’s restricted stock units vested and 4,113 of those shares were surrendered to Adobe to cover the tax due at vesting, valued at $251.67 a share. The filing does not report a sale on the open market. Afterward, it lists 242,911 Adobe shares held through a family trust of which he is a trustee. Mr. Chakravarthy and Mr. Day, among other Adobe executives, filed similar vesting reports the same day.
What comes next
As executive chair, Mr. Narayen will stay on the board and, according to the company, support the transition. How much of Adobe’s strategy changes under Mr. Chakravarthy, and how quickly investors come back, will be the test of how Mr. Narayen’s handoff is remembered.
Adobe did not respond to a request for comment.
Marcus Thibodeaux covers UC Berkeley alumni in business, startups, venture capital, industry and government, from Sand Hill Road boardrooms to Sacramento and Washington, for the Inquirer’s Berkeley Alumni desk. More from Marcus Thibodeaux
