Adobe Inc. (Nasdaq: ADBE) is a San Jose, California software company best known for Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and the PDF format. Founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, Adobe now runs on a subscription model through Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, and Experience Cloud.
Adobe reported fiscal 2025 revenue of $23.77 billion, up about 10.5 percent from the prior year, with net income of roughly $7.1 billion. In the second quarter of fiscal 2026, revenue hit a record $6.62 billion. Adobe pays no cash dividend and instead returns cash to shareholders through stock buybacks. As of early July 2026, shares trade in the $210 to $230 range after a sharp pullback tied to AI competition worries, and the company is in the middle of a CEO and CFO transition.
Below you will find a full breakdown of Adobe’s history, products, financial performance, stock data, dividend policy, competitors, and frequently asked questions, along with simple charts to visualize the numbers.
Adobe is an American multinational software company that builds tools for creating, editing, publishing, and marketing digital content. Millions of photographers, designers, video editors, marketers, and everyday office workers rely on its products every day, whether they know the company name or not. Anyone who has ever opened a PDF file has used technology Adobe invented.
The company is organized into three reporting areas: Digital Media, which houses the well known creative and document tools; Digital Experience, which serves marketing and customer experience teams inside large enterprises; and Publishing and Advertising, a smaller legacy segment that also includes Adobe’s advertising technology. Nearly all of Adobe’s revenue today comes from subscriptions rather than one time software purchases, a shift the company made starting in 2013 when it moved Creative Suite to the cloud based Creative Cloud model.
In recent years, Adobe has been racing to fold generative AI into its core products through a family of models called Firefly, while facing new competitive pressure from lower cost, browser based tools such as Canva and Figma.
Company History
Adobe’s story begins at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, where two computer scientists grew frustrated that their employer would not commercialize a page description language they had built. They left to start their own company instead.
1982John Warnock and Charles Geschke found Adobe Systems in Warnock’s garage in Los Altos, California. The company is named after Adobe Creek, which ran behind Warnock’s house.
1983 to 1985Apple licenses Adobe’s PostScript language for its LaserWriter printer, helping launch the desktop publishing industry. Apple also buys an early stake in Adobe.
1987Adobe releases Illustrator, originally built to help automate the work of a graphic designer.
1990Adobe Photoshop 1.0 ships, eventually becoming the industry standard for photo and image editing.
1993Adobe introduces the Portable Document Format, known as PDF, along with Acrobat and Reader.
2005Adobe acquires Macromedia, adding Flash, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks to its lineup.
2009Adobe buys web analytics company Omniture, forming the foundation of what is now the Digital Experience segment.
2013Adobe retires boxed Creative Suite software and moves fully to the subscription based Creative Cloud model.
2018Adobe Systems Incorporated formally changes its name to Adobe Inc. and crosses $100 billion in market value for the first time.
2022Adobe agrees to acquire design platform Figma for about $20 billion, a deal it later abandons in December 2023 amid regulatory pushback from UK and EU antitrust authorities.
2023 to 2025Adobe launches Firefly, its family of generative AI models, and integrates AI features across Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Express, and Experience Cloud.
2026Adobe completes its acquisition of SEO and marketing platform Semrush, announces a CEO succession plan, and reports record quarterly revenue even as its stock trades well below prior highs.
Founders
John Warnock (1940 to 2023)
Co-founder, and Adobe’s first chairman and CEO. Warnock is credited as the inventive force behind PostScript, Illustrator, and the PDF format. He led Adobe as CEO for sixteen years before retiring in 2001 and remained co-chair of the board until 2017.
Charles “Chuck” Geschke (1939 to 2021)
Co-founder, and Adobe’s president and chief operating officer during its formative growth years. Geschke and Warnock together developed PostScript and co-invented the PDF. He retired from company operations in 2000 but stayed on the board.
Both founders previously worked together at Xerox PARC. When Xerox declined to bring their page description language to market, they raised outside funding and started Adobe instead, a decision widely regarded as one of the more consequential spinouts in Silicon Valley history. Steve Jobs reportedly tried to buy the fledgling company for $5 million in 1982; Warnock and Geschke turned him down and instead sold Apple a minority stake.
CEO
Shantanu Narayen has served as Adobe’s Chair and Chief Executive Officer since 2007, making him one of the longest tenured CEOs in the technology industry. He joined Adobe in 1998 and is widely credited with steering the company’s shift from boxed software to a cloud subscription business, a move that reshaped Adobe’s financial profile and set the template many other software companies later followed.
In March 2026, Adobe’s board announced that Narayen plans to step down as CEO once a successor is named, while remaining as board chair to support the transition. A special board committee, chaired by lead independent director Frank Calderoni, is reviewing internal and external candidates. As of this writing, Narayen remains Adobe’s active CEO and no successor has been announced. The leadership transition became more notable in June 2026 when CFO Dan Durn also departed the company, with finance veteran Steve Day named interim CFO while a permanent replacement is sought.
Headquarters
Adobe’s global headquarters sits at 345 Park Avenue in San Jose, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. The company also maintains large development and operations hubs in Newton (Massachusetts), New York City, Arden Hills (Minnesota), Lehi (Utah), Seattle, Austin, and San Francisco, plus major engineering centers in Noida and Bengaluru, India.
Business Segments
Digital Media
Adobe’s largest segment by far. Includes Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom, Firefly) and Document Cloud (Acrobat and e-signature tools). Serves everyone from students and hobbyists to professional studios.
Digital Experience
Enterprise focused marketing and customer experience software, sold as Experience Cloud. Covers analytics, content management, commerce, and campaign tools used by large brands, agencies, and retailers.
Publishing and Advertising
A smaller, legacy category that includes e-learning tools, technical document publishing, web conferencing, and Adobe Advertising. This is the unit where Adobe recorded a goodwill impairment charge in its most recent quarter.
Products and Services
Adobe groups most of its consumer facing tools under a handful of well known brands:
Creative Cloud: A subscription bundle covering Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, InDesign, Lightroom, XD, and the newer Firefly generative AI tools.
Document Cloud: Built around Acrobat and PDF, including e-signature and document workflow tools that compete directly with DocuSign.
Experience Cloud: Enterprise marketing software for analytics, content management, personalization, and commerce, aimed at Fortune 500 marketing teams.
Adobe Express: A simplified, template driven design app aimed at small businesses and casual users, built to compete more directly with Canva.
Firefly: Adobe’s family of generative AI models for images, video, vectors, and audio, now embedded across most Creative Cloud apps.
Semrush: An SEO and content visibility platform Adobe acquired in 2026 to help brands manage how they appear across AI powered search and discovery tools.
Revenue Breakdown
Adobe’s Digital Media segment, anchored by Creative Cloud and Document Cloud, generates roughly three quarters of total company revenue. Digital Experience makes up most of the remainder, with Publishing and Advertising contributing a small slice.
Fiscal 2025 Revenue by Segment (approximate)
Figures are approximate, based on Adobe’s fiscal 2025 segment disclosures (total revenue $23.77 billion).
By customer group, Adobe also reports revenue across Creative and Marketing Professionals (its largest group, including professional Creative Cloud subscribers and Experience Cloud marketing customers) and Business Professionals and Consumers (Acrobat, Document Cloud, and Express users). The Creative and Marketing Professionals group grew 13 percent year over year to $4.54 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, while Business Professionals and Consumers grew 16 percent to $1.85 billion in the same period.
Financial Performance
Adobe’s top line has grown steadily for years, powered by subscription renewals, price increases, and new AI linked products. Full year revenue climbed from $19.41 billion in fiscal 2023 to $21.51 billion in fiscal 2024 and $23.77 billion in fiscal 2025, a compound growth rate of about 10 percent per year.
Revenue in billions of US dollars. Blue bars represent fiscal 2026 quarters. Source: Adobe quarterly earnings releases and SEC filings.
Metric
FY2023
FY2024
FY2025
Q2 FY2026
Total revenue
$19.41B
$21.51B
$23.77B
$6.62B
Net income
$5.43B
$5.56B
Approx. $7.1B
$1.71B
Diluted EPS
$11.82
$12.36
$16.70
$4.25 (GAAP) / $5.96 (non-GAAP)
Gross margin
Approx. 88%
Approx. 89%
Approx. 89%
Approx. 89%
Free cash flow
n/a
Approx. $7.9B
Approx. $9.9B
n/a
Total Adobe ARR (ending)
n/a
n/a
Approx. $25.66B (currency adjusted)
$27.10B
Adobe’s non-GAAP operating margin has consistently run in the mid 40 percent range, reflecting the high margin nature of subscription software. In its most recent quarter, the company reported an unusual item: a $70 million non-cash goodwill impairment tied to its Publishing and Advertising unit, alongside record top line growth. Management has also flagged that a strategic shift toward freemium pricing in Creative Cloud, meant to widen the funnel of future paying subscribers, is expected to slow ARR growth somewhat in the second half of fiscal 2026.
Stock Information
Adobe trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker ADBE and is a component of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes. The stock has been volatile over the past year, swinging between a 52 week low near $190 and a 52 week high above $386, as investors debate whether generative AI is a growth opportunity or a competitive threat to Adobe’s creative software franchise.
52 Week Trading Range (approximate)
Range reflects trailing 52 weeks as of early July 2026. Prices change constantly, always check a live quote before trading.
Data point
Approximate value
Exchange
Nasdaq
52 week range
$190.12 to $386.60
Market capitalization
Roughly $85 to $90 billion (fluctuates with price)
Beta
Approx. 0.7, meaning historically less volatile than the broader market
Next scheduled earnings
September 10, 2026 (fiscal Q3 2026 results)
Shares outstanding
Approx. 400 million, down from over 430 million two years earlier due to buybacks
Adobe shares fell sharply through 2025 and into 2026 amid a broader software sector selloff, with investors worried that AI tools could reduce demand for traditional design software licenses. That pressure has continued even as the company posts record quarterly revenue, a disconnect several Wall Street analysts have pointed to when discussing the stock’s valuation. Some analysts, including at HSBC, have recently upgraded the stock on the view that the selloff has gone too far, while others remain cautious about slowing ARR growth guidance.
Dividends
Adobe does not currently pay a cash dividend to shareholders. The company paid small quarterly dividends between 2003 and 2005, with the final payout of $0.00625 per share in April 2005, before eliminating the program entirely to reinvest in growth, acquisitions, and research and development.
Instead of dividends, Adobe returns cash to shareholders almost entirely through share buybacks. In the first half of fiscal 2026 alone, the company repurchased about 16.6 million shares for roughly $4.59 billion, and it had approximately $26.78 billion remaining under its repurchase authorization. For income focused investors, ADBE is generally viewed as a growth stock rather than an income stock.
Adobe’s dividend yield is 0.00 percent and there is no indication the company plans to start paying a dividend in the near future, based on its current capital allocation priorities.
Competitors
Adobe faces a different set of competitors in each part of its business.
Category
Main competitors
Creative design and prototyping
Canva, Figma, Affinity, Corel
Video and audio editing
Apple Final Cut Pro, Avid, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut
Document management and e-signature
DocuSign, Microsoft, Foxit
Marketing and customer experience software
Salesforce, Oracle, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics
Advertising and SEO tools
The Trade Desk, Ahrefs, Similarweb
Canva and Figma have become the most talked about competitive threats to Adobe’s core creative franchise, largely because both are cheaper, browser based, and popular with younger designers and small teams. Adobe tried to acquire Figma in 2022 for roughly $20 billion, but abandoned the deal in late 2023 after regulators in the United Kingdom and European Union signaled they would block it on antitrust grounds. On the enterprise marketing side, Salesforce remains Adobe’s closest large scale rival.
Recent News
June 2026: Adobe’s Chief Financial Officer Dan Durn departed the company for a role at Marvell Technology, adding to leadership uncertainty during the ongoing CEO search. Steve Day, a longtime Adobe finance executive, was named interim CFO.
June 2026: Adobe reported record fiscal second quarter 2026 revenue of $6.62 billion, up 13 percent year over year, and raised its full year revenue and non-GAAP EPS targets.
2026: Adobe completed its approximately $1.87 billion acquisition of Semrush, adding SEO and brand visibility tools aimed at helping marketers manage how they appear in AI powered search results.
March 2026: Adobe announced that CEO Shantanu Narayen will transition out of the role once a successor is named, while remaining as board chair.
2026: Adobe was added to several Russell value and defensive indexes following its stock decline, while continuing to roll out agentic AI features across Firefly and Creative Cloud.
Ongoing: Adobe Analytics data continues to be widely cited in retail and e-commerce coverage, including tracking of major shopping events such as Amazon Prime Day.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Adobe actually make?
Adobe makes software for creating and editing digital content (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro), managing documents (Acrobat and PDF), and running marketing and customer experience programs for large businesses (Experience Cloud).
Who founded Adobe and when?
Adobe was founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, two computer scientists who previously worked together at Xerox PARC.
Who is the CEO of Adobe right now?
Shantanu Narayen remains Adobe’s Chair and CEO as of mid 2026. He has announced plans to step down as CEO once the board names a successor, but he continues to lead the company in the meantime.
Where is Adobe headquartered?
Adobe’s headquarters is located at 345 Park Avenue, San Jose, California.
Does Adobe pay a dividend?
No. Adobe has not paid a dividend since 2005 and currently returns cash to shareholders through stock buybacks instead of dividend payments.
Is Adobe stock a good buy?
This article is provided for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Adobe combines strong subscription revenue and high margins with real uncertainty about how generative AI will affect demand for its software, so investors should weigh their own goals, risk tolerance, and research, or speak with a licensed financial advisor, before making any investment decision.
What are Adobe’s biggest business segments?
Digital Media (Creative Cloud and Document Cloud) is by far Adobe’s largest segment, followed by Digital Experience (enterprise marketing software), and the smaller Publishing and Advertising segment.
Who are Adobe’s biggest competitors?
Canva and Figma are Adobe’s most discussed rivals in creative design, while Salesforce competes closely in marketing and customer experience software.
Did Adobe buy Figma?
Adobe agreed to acquire Figma for about $20 billion in 2022 but called off the deal in December 2023 after facing significant regulatory opposition in the UK and EU.
What is Adobe’s ticker symbol?
Adobe trades on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol ADBE.
This article is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Stock prices, financial figures, and company details change frequently; always verify current data through Adobe’s investor relations site, official SEC filings, or a live market data provider before making decisions. Neither the author nor this publication holds any position in ADBE at the time of writing unless otherwise disclosed.
