Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen announced plans to step down as CEO last month after 18 years leading software vendor through several periods of tech change from the arrival of the cloud, mobile computing, and the early days of artificial intelligence.  

For whomever is tapped next for the top job — the search is expected to take several months — the biggest priority will be reshaping Adobe’s products and strategy for the next wave of agentic AI, analysts said.

“Ultimately, Adobe must evolve from a leader in creative tools to the system that connects content, context, and commerce in a world of real-time agentic interactions,” said Gerry Murray, research director at IDC.

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Narayen’s resignation, will “force the Adobe board to search for a leader who is not just a master of the subscription economy, but a visionary in the ‘agentic’ AI era,” Jim Lundy at Aragon Research said in a blog post last month.   

Adobe’s next CEO inherits a business that’s fundamentally strong, but entering a “more complex phase of execution,” said Maria Bell, senior research analyst at CCS Insight. “Under Shantanu Narayen, the company not only transitioned to a cloud subscription model, but built a highly integrated platform spanning creative, document and marketing workflows. 

“The challenge for his successor is less about transformation and more about proving that Adobe’s AI-led strategy can deliver consistent, long-term growth.” 

Questions about the company’s path ahead come as it prepares for Adobe Connect later this month in Las Vegas. The event runs April 20-22.

Adobe was among the early adopters of generative AI (genAI) with the launch of its Firefly model in March 2023, positioning itself as a commercially safe tool for enterprise customers such as IBM, Pepsi and Mattel to generate content. It later expanded Firefly with the addition of multi-modal AI tools that included video, vector and audio, while embedding Firefly across its software and rolling out GenStudio in 2024 to help businesses manage AI-generated at scale. 

Those moves have yet to reassure investors that the company is on solid footing. Adobe’s stock fell following its latest earnings report, despite seeing better-than-expected revenue and a three-fold year-on-year increase in AI-related sales.

Adobe had 850 million monthly users across Acrobat, Creative Cloud, Express and Firefly, according to its most recent financial results.

The company faces competition from a number of vendors, including Canva and Figma, which also offer creative design tools. It also must contend with AI providers such as OpenAI and Google that enable users to generate content via prompts.

“Adobe is no longer competing only with traditional design tools, but with a broader set of AI-native platforms and ecosystems that are reshaping how content is created and consumed,” said Bell. “This shifts the basis of competition from product capability to accessibility, integration and cost — putting pressure on Adobe’s historical pricing power.”

Although he will remain as chairman of the board, Narayen’s departure adds to the uncertainty around Adobe’s future. 

“While Adobe is currently in a position of strength,” said Lundy, “a leadership change of this magnitude often invites aggressive competitive maneuvers from rivals in the marketing and design tech stacks.” 

The key challenge for any successor will be “balancing Adobe’s professional-grade heritage with the increasing commoditization of creative tools driven by AI,” he said.

The most immediate pressure point for Adobe is its Creative Cloud suite, according to Murray, as competitors threaten Adobe’s dominance in the market. “AI-native tools are collapsing the value of skill, time, and complexity, especially for students and prosumers,” he said. “Adobe will need to rethink pricing and packaging around outputs rather than tools, while dramatically simplifying the user experience.” 

Nevertheless, Adobe retains a “significant structural advantage” in the strength of its product ecosystem and user base, said Bell. “Its tools remain deeply embedded among professional designers and creative teams, supported by a strong community built over decades.”

Another priority will be the need to differentiate its offerings from competitors that rely on similar AI models. This shifts competition away from engineering and towards a go-to-market strategy, Murray said, requiring Adobe to “innovate on pricing, packaging, and partners” to attract and retain users. 

Adobe has made “clear progress” embedding generative AI (genAI) tools across its portfolio, said Bell, but the move towards usage-based models — including generative credits and more flexible access models — “creates uncertainty around pricing, revenue predictability and margin sustainability.

“As such, the priority is moving from feature rollout to monetization discipline,” she said. 

There’s also the prospect that increasingly capable autonomous third-party AI agents could put pressure on Adobe’s margins. While some SaaS-pocalypse concerns are overblown — including the prospect that business customers will vibe-code their own enterprise apps – the emergence of increasingly capable AI agents could push software applications down to an infrastructure layer that agents access on behalf of humans. 

“AI is making it possible to recompose software dynamically, which threatens traditional application-layer value,” said Murray. 

At the same time, he noted that Adobe also has the opportunity to “redefine its moat” around agentic workflows and its ability to connect content and data for smarter automation.

To help Adobe adapt to these ongoing technological shifts, the next CEO will need to appoint a “central authority to align AI product strategy, platform architecture, and partnerships across business units” or lead the charge.

Adobe requires a “robust AI stack,” he said, but will have to find its place in a shifting landscape.  “… Adobe is unlikely to own the enterprise AI control plane, so success will depend on building an open, interoperable stack that integrates with hyperscalers while delivering differentiated value at the application and workflow level,” said Murray.