Adobe's Answer to AI Eating Software
Adobe launched a new agentic AI platform this week called CX Enterprise Coworker, designed to automate marketing campaigns, customer engagement, sales, and loyalty workflows for corporate customers. The company also announced partnerships with more than 30 AI companies, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, and IBM.
The move is Adobe's direct response to investor fears that AI-native tools from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others could erode its dominance in creative and marketing workflows. Adobe's stock has fallen more than 60% from its February 2024 high, largely driven by those concerns.
How CX Enterprise Coworker Works
Unlike traditional AI tools that respond to prompts, agentic AI can plan, take actions, and move through multiple tasks with limited human input. Adobe's Coworker acts as a project manager for AI agents, translating business goals into multistep campaigns while keeping users in control.
If a marketing team wants to increase cross-sell performance by 3%, for example, CX Enterprise Coworker can assemble audience segments, creative assets, and performance insights needed for a targeted offer. After user approval, it can help launch the campaign and monitor results.
Today, that work requires marketers to jump between dashboards, reports, approval chains, creative tools, and analytics systems. Adobe wants CX Enterprise to coordinate the work across those platforms.
Why This Matters for Your Workflows
Adobe already sits in the middle of many enterprise marketing workflows. More than 20,000 global brands use Adobe, and its Experience Platform manages customer data and powers more than 1 trillion customer interactions annually.
That scale matters. Adobe's new approach positions itself as connective tissue between enterprise AI agents and the tools they need-marketing data, creative assets, brand rules, and campaign workflows. Instead of replacing Adobe, AI agents will pass through its platforms.
Adobe also designed CX Enterprise to deliver what it calls "reliable and auditable agentic workflows." That means AI tools behave predictably and leave a traceable record of decisions. Companies need to know what data informed an output, what rules constrained it, and where human review occurred. That traceability is what enterprises will pay for.
The Semrush Deal Reveals Adobe's Strategy
Adobe's $1.9 billion acquisition of Semrush last November fits into this broader vision. Semrush brings search engine optimization and digital marketing tools that help brands understand how they're discovered online, including keyword strategies, search-ranking intelligence, and tools to help brands appear in AI-generated answers.
Adobe doesn't just want to help you create marketing content. It wants to help you ensure that content gets found-especially as consumers increasingly begin shopping journeys inside AI tools.
Adobe's own data shows that traffic from AI sources to U.S. retail sites grew 393% year over year in the first three months of 2026. Those AI-referred shoppers converted 42% better than non-AI traffic.
What Adobe's Numbers Show
Despite the stock's poor performance, Adobe's underlying business has grown steadily. Fiscal year 2025 revenue reached $23.8 billion, up 11% from the prior year. In fiscal Q1 2026, Adobe reported record revenue of $6.4 billion, up 12% year over year.
Adjusted earnings per share rose 19% to $6.06. Operating cash flow hit a first-quarter record of nearly $3 billion. The company also repurchased more than 8 million shares.
Most significantly, annualized recurring revenue from Adobe's AI-focused offerings more than tripled year over year. Usage of its generative AI tools rose more than 45% from the prior quarter.
What Comes Next
Over the next few quarters, investors and customers will watch whether Adobe's AI push converts to real adoption and recurring revenue. If it does, Adobe could emerge more deeply embedded in the workflows that matter most to marketers.
If it doesn't, the company risks spending heavily on AI without meaningful returns beyond marketing buzz.
CX Enterprise's launch suggests Adobe understands the stakes. In the AI era, software companies will be judged less by the apps they sell and more by the workflows they control.
Few software companies enter that test with Adobe's financial strength, entrenched workflows, and industry partnerships. But the company still must prove it can turn AI agents and automation into a real growth driver.
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