Adobe faces an AI-era test of whether the creative economy still needs it

At Adobe, the AI era is a test of whether a company built on iconic creative tools can remake itself fast enough to remain indispensable without losing the professionals who made those tools matter.

Recommended Video

Anil Chakravarthy is at the center of that effort. The former Informatica CEO now leads Adobe’s customer experience business as the company faces mounting pressure to stay ahead of the disruption bearing down on products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat. Such pressure has also shown up in Adobe’s stock. Despite record first-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of $6.40 billion, its shares have fallen as investors worry that fast-moving AI agents and other new tools could weaken demand for parts of the traditional seat-based software model.

The concern underlying both pressures is the same: Adobe has to keep pace with AI without undermining the trust of enterprise customers that depend on its software for critical business functions. Chakravarthy points to moments like the Super Bowl and the Olympics, when Adobe systems are expected to perform flawlessly under intense pressure. In those environments, he says the challenge is determining which parts of the company should move at AI speed and which must still move at the pace of customer trust.

“The fastest moving AI models and the AI companies, let’s say they’re moving at 100 miles an hour,” Chakravarthy says. “The customers are moving at 10 miles an hour.”

Caught between speed and trust

That gap leaves Adobe in a difficult position. If it moves too slowly, it risks looking dated in a market being reshaped by AI. If it moves too quickly, it risks weakening the reliability that large customers still pay for. Inside a company of more than 30,000 people, that split can create what seems like “whiplash,” as teams are pushed to move at AI speed without disrupting the software customers depend on.

“If we just move only at their speed, then we’re going to be slow, and we’re not going to be their trusted partner three years from now,” Chakravarthy says. “If we move completely at 100 miles an hour, like the AI is moving and break everything, including the software that currently works for them today, well, we won’t be their trusted partner three years from now either.”

That tension has grown more significant since Adobe said last month that longtime CEO Shantanu Narayen will step down once a successor is found. The transition has focused internal attention on whether the company’s future depends more on preserving its creative DNA or on doubling down on the enterprise discipline required to navigate the AI shift.

Either way, the stakes are rising as Adobe tries to satisfy enterprise customers, reassure investors, and hold on to a creative community wary that the company is prioritizing scale and efficiency over craft.

A company moving at two speeds

Chakravarthy sees the current moment as a genuine platform shift, on the scale of the move from mainframes to client-server computing, then to the internet, and now to mobile. But this transition poses a more destabilizing question for incumbents. The issue is no longer whether software includes AI. The question is whether conventional SaaS products will still feel current a few years from now.

For Adobe, that implies something larger than a product refresh. The company built its empire on powerful tools that users controlled directly. The model now taking shape gives software a more active role within the workflow itself, carrying out tasks and advancing work rather than waiting for instructions at every step.

Already, AI has lowered the barrier to producing content. Users can generate images, videos, copy, and campaigns with a growing number of tools with startling ease. As that capability becomes commonplace, the question shifts from who can produce content fastest to why anyone still needs an expensive, sophisticated software stack at all.

Chakravarthy’s answer rests on the distinction between generation and execution. Producing content is becoming easier, he acknowledges. Turning that draft into something a company can actually use, trust, govern, and recognize as its own is harder. That is where Adobe is trying to place its value.

“The more ubiquitous base capabilities become, the harder it actually becomes to differentiate and stand out,” Chakravarthy says. “And that’s where we believe we will continue to have a very vital role to play.”

The fight over what still matters

In that view, AI does not eliminate the need for software so much as shift its value toward brand consistency, workflow integration, enterprise controls, and creative distinctiveness. In a market crowded with capable models and fast-moving startups, the stronger position may lie in helping customers personalize content at scale without sacrificing quality. Chakravarthy argues that this is a more durable place for an enterprise company to compete than simply producing the cheapest image or fastest draft.

That logic may