Adobe faces a test of whether creative professionals still need its tools
Adobe's revenue hit a record $6.40 billion in its first fiscal quarter of 2026, yet its stock has fallen as investors worry that AI agents and faster tools could erode demand for its traditional software model. The company now faces a specific pressure: move fast enough to keep pace with AI disruption without losing the trust of enterprise customers and creative professionals who depend on its products.
Anil Chakravarthy, who leads Adobe's customer experience business, sits at the center of that tension. He frames the challenge as a speed mismatch. AI companies move at "100 miles an hour," he says, while customers move at "10 miles an hour." Adobe has to find the middle ground.
Caught between two speeds
Move too slowly and Adobe risks looking outdated. Move too fast and the company breaks the reliability that large customers pay for. Inside a 30,000-person organization, that split creates what feels like whiplash.
"If we just move only at their speed, then we're going to be slow, and we're not going to be their trusted partner three years from now," Chakravarthy said. "If we move completely at 100 miles an hour and break everything, including the software that currently works for them today, well, we won't be their trusted partner three years from now either."
The stakes rose higher after Adobe announced last month that longtime CEO Shantanu Narayen will step down once a successor is found. The transition has raised internal questions about whether the company's future depends on preserving its creative DNA or doubling down on the enterprise discipline required to survive the AI shift.
What Adobe is betting on
Chakravarthy sees the current moment as a genuine platform shift-comparable to the move from mainframes to client-server computing, then to the internet, then to mobile. But this transition poses a more destabilizing question for incumbents. The issue is no longer whether software includes AI. The question is whether conventional software products will feel current in a few years.
AI has already lowered the barrier to producing content. Users can generate images, videos, copy, and campaigns with startling ease using a growing number of tools. As that capability becomes commonplace, the question shifts from who can produce content fastest to why anyone still needs an expensive software stack at all.
Chakravarthy's answer rests on a distinction: generation versus execution. Producing content is becoming easier. Turning that draft into something a company can actually use, trust, govern, and recognize as its own is harder. That is where Adobe is trying to place its value.
"The more ubiquitous base capabilities become, the harder it actually becomes to differentiate and stand out," he said. "And that's where we believe we will continue to have a very vital role to play."
The tension with creatives
Adobe's logic may work in the boardroom. It is less reassuring to many core creative users, who worry that in trying to serve everyone, Adobe could weaken the depth and control that made its tools indispensable.
Creatives have raised direct concerns about Firefly, Adobe's generative AI system for creating and editing images and other content. Some question how the models were trained, whether copyrighted work was used, and whether tools like this will reduce the value of human creative labor.
That tension runs through Adobe's public posture on AI. The company wants to present new tools as accelerants for creativity rather than replacements for it. It wants to promise greater speed without implying that skill matters less. It wants to reach a broader user base without signaling to core professionals that AI will devalue their work. Those are difficult positions to hold at once.
Chakravarthy's bet is that originality, identity, and taste matter more when everyone can make content quickly and cheaply. In that world, Adobe does not need to win by being the only company that can generate content. It needs to win by helping customers turn generated material into work that feels unmistakably their own.
For creatives navigating this shift, understanding how to work alongside AI tools rather than against them may become essential. Resources like AI for Creatives can help professionals adapt their workflows and maintain their competitive edge as the tools change.
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