US-based Adobe has named Anil Chakravarthy as its subsequent president and CEO, efficient 1 December.

He succeeds Shantanu Narayen, who has led the corporate since December 2007 and can grow to be govt Chairman. Chakravarthy additionally joins Adobe’s board.

The appointment retains Adobe’s high job with an India-origin engineer. Narayen grew up in Hyderabad. Chakravarthy holds a BTech in laptop science and engineering from the Institute of Expertise, Varanasi, now IIT (BHU), and each a grasp’s diploma and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise.

He has been at Adobe for six and a half years, most lately as president of its Buyer Expertise Orchestration enterprise and worldwide area operations.

Frank Calderoni, Adobe’s lead unbiased director, chaired the particular committee that ran the search after Narayen introduced in March that he would step down as soon as a successor was discovered. The committee thought-about each inside and exterior candidates.

“The Board has unanimously decided that Anil is the best chief for Adobe’s subsequent chapter of progress,” mentioned Frank Calderoni, lead unbiased director, Adobe.

Calderoni mentioned Chakravarthy had “remodeled and expanded Adobe’s Buyer Expertise Orchestration enterprise and worldwide area operations via innovation-led progress” over his time on the firm.

From Varanasi to San Jose

Chakravarthy’s path to the job was slower and extra technical than the one often related to software program CEOs. After Varanasi and MIT, he started his profession at McKinsey & Firm, the place he ultimately co-led the consulting agency’s e-business apply in its Silicon Valley expertise workplace.

He moved to VeriSign, then spent near a decade at Symantec in senior roles spanning data safety, endpoint safety, encryption and information loss prevention. His obligations at Symantec at varied factors included the corporate’s India product operations.

His first CEO function got here at Informatica, the enterprise cloud information administration firm. He joined in 2013 as govt vp and chief product officer and have become CEO in 2015, a place he held till 2020.

What he did there’s the clearest information to why Adobe’s board selected him. At Informatica he took over as acting CEO when a $5.3 billion buyout took the corporate personal, and went on to shift its enterprise from software program licences in direction of cloud and subscription companies. That’s near the transformation Narayen is greatest remembered for at Adobe, transferring the corporate off boxed perpetual licences onto Inventive Cloud subscriptions, a change that outlined the next decade.

Chakravarthy joined Adobe in January 2020 as govt vp and common supervisor of the Digital Expertise enterprise. He took on worldwide area operations in September 2020, was promoted to president of Digital Expertise and international area operations in December 2021, and most lately led the renamed Buyer Expertise Orchestration enterprise alongside international gross sales, skilled companies and buyer assist.

He sits on the board of FIS and has beforehand served on the boards of Ansys and USAA Financial institution.

The a part of Adobe he remodeled

Chakravarthy’s work at Adobe has been in enterprise software program relatively than the inventive instruments the corporate is understood for.

Below his management the phase crossed $1 billion in quarterly income. He oversaw the acquisition and integration of Workfront, and extra lately Semrush, and led the event of merchandise together with Adobe CX Enterprise, GenStudio and Model Visibility, in addition to scaling the Adobe Expertise Platform.

“I am energized by the chance to gasoline progress and drive Adobe’s management within the subsequent period of agentic software program for creativity, productiveness and buyer expertise,” mentioned Anil Chakravarthy, incoming president and CEO, Adobe.

Nevertheless, the job comes with stress that the handover language doesn’t convey. Adobe’s shares have fallen round 18% in 2026, after declining greater than 21% in 2025, as traders have marked down software program firms they consider are uncovered to disruption from AI.

The aggressive image has shifted sharply. Figma, which Adobe tried to amass for about $20 billion earlier than abandoning the deal in late 2023 over regulatory objections in Europe and the UK, is now a listed rival.

Canva has grow to be the default design software for thousands and thousands of customers, together with who have been by no means going to be taught Photoshop. A gradual stream of AI-native picture and video instruments now produce in a single immediate what as soon as took a day.

Adobe’s response has been to construct AI into its personal merchandise, and there’s proof of traction. The corporate raised its annual revenue forecast in June, citing demand for its AI merchandise, and has mentioned its AI-first annual recurring income tripled yr on yr to greater than $500 million.

Indians on the high of world tech firms

Notably, Chakravarthy joins a bunch of India-born or India-origin CEOs operating a number of the world’s largest expertise firms, together with Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Sundar Pichai at Alphabet, Arvind Krishna at IBM and Neal Mohan at YouTube.

Adobe’s case is uncommon inside that group as a result of the handover is from one India-origin CEO to a different. Narayen spent eighteen years turning Adobe from a boxed-software firm right into a subscription enterprise. Chakravarthy takes over with a mandate to navigate the subsequent transition.