Adobe Names Anil Chakravarthy as Chief Executive Amid AI Transformation

Adobe ADBE 2.13%increase; up pointing triangle said its new chief executive will be Anil Chakravarthy, who has led the company’s customer experience arm for the past six years.

Chakravarthy will step in on Dec. 1, succeeding Shantanu Narayen, who disclosed his plans in March to step down after nearly two decades.

Chakravarthy has led the development of several of Adobe’s AI products as the company has raced to keep up with how agents are changing the software industry. He said Thursday that he looked forward to transforming Adobe in the era of AI.

“I could not be more confident that Anil is the right person to lead Adobe’s growth in an AI-driven era,” Narayen said.

Chakravarthy led development of the generative AI platform GenStudio, as well as Adobe CX Enterprise, which uses AI agents to run marketing campaigns.

He joined the software company in January 2020 as executive vice president and general manager leading the digital experience business. Later that year, he took over leadership of Adobe’s worldwide field operations serving enterprise customers.

At the end of 2021, he was promoted to president of digital experience and worldwide field operations.

Before coming to Adobe, Chakravarthy spent four years as chief executive of Informatica, the cloud-data firm that was acquired last year by Salesforce in an $8 billion deal.

Chakravarthy will work closely with Narayen, who is transitioning to executive chair, Adobe said. Narayen, who joined the company in 1998, said in March that he would stay involved with the company and help choose his successor.