Shantanu NarayenChair & Chief Executive Officer, Adobe Inc. (ADBE)
CEO since 2007 and chair since 2017. Moved Adobe from boxed Creative Suite to the Creative Cloud subscription, bought Macromedia, Omniture and Marketo, and took the company from roughly $3 billion to more than $23 billion of annual revenue. On 12 March 2026 he told the board he intends to hand over the CEO role once a successor is appointed, staying on as chair; the search covers internal and external candidates and no successor had been named by the end of August 2026.
4 recorded appearances
Narayen's last Adobe Summit keynote as CEO, built around the move from generative to agentic AI and the launch of Adobe CX Enterprise, with a guest appearance by Nvidia's Jensen Huang.
Watch or read →Weeks after announcing he would hand over the CEO role, Narayen sits with Jensen Huang and talks through succession, what he thinks a founder-run company owes its next leader, and where AI leaves creative software.
Watch or read →Interviewed by Jon Fortt at Adobe Summit, Narayen argues the bear case on software misreads AI: the tools raise the amount of content produced, and Adobe monetises production rather than seat count alone.
Watch or read →
At the India AI Impact Summit, Narayen frames AI as amplifying rather than replacing creative intent, and makes the case for India as an engineering and consumption market for Adobe.
Watch or read →