{"id":473280,"date":"2026-03-13T11:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T11:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/473280\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T11:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T11:05:07","slug":"adobe-ceo-shantanu-narayen-to-step-down-after-18-years-the-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/473280\/","title":{"rendered":"Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen to step down after 18 years \u2022 The Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has announced he intends to depart the company after 18 years as the prince of PDFs.<\/p>\n

Narayen didn\u2019t say why he\u2019s moving on, but on the company\u2019s Q1 2026 earnings call said he notified Adobe\u2019s board of his decision some time ago. Adobe\u2019s announcement<\/a> of the CEO\u2019s departure also offers no rationale.<\/p>\n

The closest thing The Register could find to a rationale came on the company\u2019s earnings call, during which Narayen said \u201cAs a company that has prided itself on creating categories, our AI transformation begins with a focus on customer-centric product strategy to anticipate and fulfill the diverse needs of a large and growing customer base.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe Narayen felt he doesn\u2019t have another big transition in him, after he led Adobe\u2019s swing to become a SaaS company? It\u2019s also worth noting he\u2019s not likely to be short of cash given the size<\/a> of his recent paychecks.<\/p>\n

That said, Narayen had a solid AI story to tell, telling investors annual recurring revenue from the company\u2019s new AI-first offerings more than tripled year-over-year, \u201creflecting progress against this opportunity with individuals and enterprises alike.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those weren\u2019t just hollow words: David Wadhwani, president of the company\u2019s Creativity and Productivity Business, pointed to 45 percent quarter-over-quarter growth in consumption of generative AI credits.<\/p>\n

Wadhwani said use of credits to pay for video generation rose 8x year-over-year, and audio generation doubled. That growth, he said, shows Adobe customers are \u201cmoving deeper into AI-assisted creation across the full creative process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and for Adobe that meant a dip for its business selling stock images.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Q1 had many highlights, our traditional stock business saw a steeper decline than we expected,\u201d Wadhwani admitted. \u201cThis shift is playing out more quickly than we had planned for, and our focus remains on giving customers meaningful choice between stock and generative AI as they build their creative and marketing workflows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Narayen said the decline in stock sales meant Adobe posted 10.9 percent growth in recurring revenue, instead of 11.2 percent.<\/p>\n

The company posted record revenue for the quarter of $6.4 billion, up 12 percent year-over-year, and net income of $1.9 billion. Subscription revenue rose 13 percent year-over-year. Those aren\u2019t numbers that typically get boards looking for a new CEO.<\/p>\n

The board needs to anyway and said it will consider internal and external candidates.<\/p>\n

Narayen said Adobe has \u201calways invested in developing a really deep bench of outstanding execs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked what the board will look for in his successor, he said Adobe will always be a product company. \u201cAnd I think taking advantage and looking around the corner as it relates to the immense opportunity that AI has across creativity and marketing is the real opportunity for not just the CEO, but the company as well,\u201d he concluded. \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has announced he intends to depart the company after 18 years as the prince…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-473280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}