Shantanu Narayen: Adobe Chair and CEO Since 2007

Shantanu Narayen is the chair and chief executive officer of Adobe, the software company behind Photoshop, Acrobat and the PDF format. He has led the company since 2007 and has chaired its board since 2017.

His tenure is now entering its final months. In September 2026 Adobe named Anil Chakravarthy as its next president and chief executive from December 1, 2026, with Narayen moving to the role of executive chair.

Education

Narayen holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from Osmania University. He went on to earn a master’s degree in computer science at Bowling Green State University in the United States.

He also holds a Master of Business Administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, according to his Adobe biography.

Career

Narayen began his career in Silicon Valley in product roles. He held senior manager positions at Apple Computer, and later served as director of desktop and collaboration products at Silicon Graphics.

In 1996 he co-founded Pictra Inc., a company that made software for sharing digital photos online. Adobe’s filings describe it as a digital photo sharing software company.

He joined Adobe in January 1998 as vice president and general manager of its engineering technology group. A year later, in January 1999, he was promoted to senior vice president of worldwide products.

In March 2001 he became executive vice president of worldwide products. On January 17, 2005, Adobe announced his appointment as president and chief operating officer, reporting to then chief executive Bruce Chizen.

Narayen became chief executive of Adobe in 2007. Ten years later, in 2017, he was also named chairman of the board.

On the board of Adobe he now holds the title of chair and CEO. Outside the company, he sits on the board of the drugmaker Pfizer and previously served as a director of Dell.

In September 2026, Adobe’s board unanimously chose Anil Chakravarthy, who runs the Customer Experience Orchestration business and worldwide field operations, as the next chief executive. Narayen will stay on as executive chair and work with him on the handover. “The Board has unanimously determined that Anil is the right leader for Adobe’s next chapter of growth,” said Frank Calderoni, the lead independent director.

Current Roles

Chair and chief executive officer, Adobe Inc. (CEO since 2007, chair since 2017)
Executive chair of Adobe from December 1, 2026 (announced)
Member of the board of directors, Pfizer

Key Achievements

The Move to Subscriptions

Adobe credits Narayen with pioneering a cloud-based subscription model for its creative products. Creative Cloud launched in 2012, and in May 2013 Adobe said it would stop releasing new versions of the boxed Creative Suite and focus on Creative Cloud.

At the time of the switch, a full Creative Cloud plan cost $49.99 a month and a single app $19.99, with a lower first-year price for owners of older Creative Suite versions, The Next Web reported.

Creative Cloud launch: 2012
Creative Suite replaced by subscriptions: announced May 2013
Digital Media revenue, fiscal 2025: $17.65 billion

Building a Digital Marketing Business

His Adobe biography also credits him with creating and leading the digital experience category, the company’s software for marketing, analytics and customer data. A key early step was the purchase of the web analytics firm Omniture, which Adobe agreed to buy for $1.8 billion in September 2009. Omniture’s tools collected data from websites and analysed it to help companies improve their marketing and advertising.

Omniture deal: about $1.8 billion (2009)
Digital Experience revenue, fiscal 2025: $5.86 billion, up 9%

PDF as a Global Standard

Adobe introduced PDF and Acrobat in 1993, before Narayen joined. During his time as a senior leader, PDF became an open standard in 2008, and the company describes him as having established the global standard for digital documents.

Shantanu Narayen, Adobe Chair and CEO Who Moved Its Software to Subscriptions — Adobe World Headquarters in San Jose, California, 2023. Photo: FASTILY, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Generative AI and Firefly

Under Narayen, Adobe launched Firefly, its family of generative AI models, in 2023. The company describes Firefly as a commercially safe generative AI model.

Adobe’s AI-driven tools also reach the Kingdom. The company was the first global software firm to run regional AI workloads on HUMAIN’s locally hosted computing infrastructure, as we reported in our analysis of Saudi AI after the FII10 delay.

New Products and Acquisitions

Adobe’s own timeline lists a steady run of launches and purchases during his years as chief executive.

2010: Day Software acquired
2016: Adobe Sensei brings AI features across products
2019: Adobe Experience Platform launched; Adobe co-founds the Content Authenticity Initiative
2021: Adobe Express launched; Frame.io acquired
2024: Adobe GenStudio and Acrobat AI Assistant introduced
2026: Semrush and Topaz Labs acquired

Record Results in Fiscal 2025

For the fiscal year that ended on November 28, 2025, Adobe reported record revenue of $23.77 billion, up 11%. It ended the year with total annualised recurring revenue of $25.20 billion, and set a target of 10.2% growth in that figure for fiscal 2026.

Total revenue: $23.77 billion, up 11%
Operating cash flow: $10.03 billion
Revenue target for fiscal 2026: $25.90 billion to $26.10 billion

The Company in Numbers

Revenue: $23.77 billion (fiscal 2025)
Total annualised recurring revenue: $25.20 billion (end of fiscal 2025)
Operating cash flow: $10.03 billion (fiscal 2025)
Employees: 31,360 (November 28, 2025)
Monthly active users of Adobe products: more than 1 billion (2026, company figure)
Enterprise customers worldwide: more than 20,000 (2026, company figure)

Awards and Honours

Padma Shri, one of India’s civilian honours
Economic Times Global Indian of the Year
Named among Barron’s World’s Best CEOs
Named on Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year list
Named a Top CEO by Glassdoor, based on employee reviews
Holder of five patents

In Their Own Words

Announcing the fiscal 2025 results in December 2025, Narayen said: “Adobe’s record FY2025 results reflect our growing importance in the global AI ecosystem and the rapid adoption of our AI-driven tools.”

On his chosen successor, in Adobe’s statement of September 2026, he said: “I could not be more confident that Anil is the right person to lead Adobe’s growth in an AI-driven era.”