New Delhi: Adobe’s long-standing CEO Shantanu Narayen, part of a quartet of Indian-origin executives leading global technology giants, has stepped down from the hot seat after 18 years and a quarter at the helm.
Narayen announced Thursday that he will remain as the chairperson of the board of directors at Adobe, and will retain his CEO role until the company identifies a successor.
“The next era of creativity is being written right now—, by new workflows and by entirely new forms of expression. Adobe has never waited for the future to arrive. We’ve anticipated it. We’ve built it. And we’ve led it,” he wrote in an email to employees on 9 March, doffing his hat to them.
The first of the Indian quartet
Narayen was the first among Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google and Alphabet chief , and IBM honcho Aravind Krishna to take the top seat. He also becomes the first among the four to walk into the sunset.
During his stint, Narayen steered Adobe through the 2008 economic crisis, as well as the enterprise cloud migration era of the mid-2010s. Adobe’s revenue went from $3.58 billion in fiscal 2008 (Adobe counts its financial cycle from December to November) to $23.8 billion in fiscal 2025—a compound annual growth rate of 12% to Adobe’s top line.
Adobe’s share price, went from $42 apiece when Narayen took charge, to nearly $270 at Thursday’s market close. It reached a high of $689 apiece in November 2021, at that time returning a compound 22% annually since December 2008.
In comparison, Nadella, who took his role in February 2014, saw Microsoft’s share price rise from $38 each to $402 at Thursday’s closing. Its operating revenue rose from $86.8 billion during Nadella’s first fiscal in charge, to $282 billion in fiscal 2025. Its accounting year runs from July to June.
Pichai’s stint at Alphabet saw the company’s top line rise from $75 billion in fiscal 2015, to $402.8 billion as of fiscal 2025. The company counts its financial cycle from January to December.
Krishna, meanwhile, has been in charge of IBM for five full fiscals now. During this time, the company’s revenue has dropped from $73.6 billion in fiscal 2020 to $67.5 billion in fiscal 2025. IBM, like Google, also follows the January-to-December financial cycle.
The long innings
Investors rued Narayen’s decision to step down, with Adobe’s share price down 7.8% in after-hours trading on US stock exchange, Nasdaq.
Compared to software companies, Adobe could be perceived as dull. It does not make headlines with mega-mergers. Narayen is not a swashbuckler, like many of his peers in Silicon Valley. But, traits that Adobe and Narayen scored higher than many others are: reinvention and longevity.
Founded in 1982, Adobe is still going strong—it ended with $23.8 billion in annual revenue last fiscal. Narayen, who joined the company in 1998 and took over as chief in December 2007, helped the company weather the disruption posed by cloud computing firms in the last decade. His other success story is the subscriptions with both its flagship products, Photoshop and Illustrator.
Last year, Narayen sought to pivot Adobe away from only selling creative products to AI services, including agentic AI workflow management platforms. This came in the face of competition from the likes of Australian Photoshop rival Canva, Illustrator rival Figma, and generative video platforms from Big Tech rivals such as Google’s Veo and OpenAI’s Sora taking on Adobe’s once-monopolies in Premiere Pro and AfterEffects.
Peers and analysts reacted well to Narayen stepping down.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Nadella wrote, “Congrats Shantanu, on a legendary run at Adobe… What has always stood out to me is the empathy you’ve brought to the creative process and the example you’ve set as a leader. Grateful for your friendship, mentorship, and for all you’ve done for Adobe and for our industry.”
Nadella and Narayen both attended Hyderabad Public School in the Telangana capital (as did Shailesh Jejurikar, appointed president and CEO of Proctor & Gamble from 1 January this year).
The big picture is that both Adobe and Narayen have done very well in the last 18 years and the change in leadership could be strategic, said an expert. “At least until 2021, Adobe had done exceedingly well, with strategic acquisitions such as Behance and Magento as well,” said Kashyap Kompella, founder of technology consultancy firm RPA2AI Research. But, it has faced business pressures given the agility of Canva’s modular pricing and over a failed Figma acquisition attempt. “Adobe has struggled—especially since it was set up for the SaaS pricing model,” he added.
Losing steam to peers
has so far hit Adobe hard. Its market cap peaked at $328 billion in November 2021 as it ranked among the world’s 50 biggest companies then. At the time of writing, Adobe had fallen to 190th on the list, with a market cap of $110 billion—about a third of what it was five years ago. India accounts for about 4.5% of its global revenue.
In comparison, Microsoft under Nadella grew its market cap from $318 billion to $4 trillion at the end of 2025; a Pichai-helmed Alphabet from $434 billion to $4.1 trillion ranking it second only to Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company now. IBM’s Krishna has also more than doubled the company’s market cap, which rose from $111 billion in 2020 to $289 billion at the end of 2025.
But, it hasn’t been all doom and gloom for Adobe. On Thursday, it reported $6.4 billion in operating revenue, beating analyst estimates of $6.28 billion as polled by Bloomberg. Net profit, however, came in at $1.9 billion, lower than the $2.42 billion expected on the streets.
For now, it remains unclear if there is a successor in mind for the Adobe board. Frank Calderoni, lead independent director, will helm a committee to find and appoint a successor to Narayen with no timeline specified.