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Trinity Audioplayer ready...By Brody Ford, Bloomberg Adobe Inc. is eyeing two internal leaders in its quest for a new chief executive officer and has hired a well-known search firm to find external candidates who could be suited to running the company in the AI era.
David Wadhwani and Anil Chakravarthy, the heads of Adobe’s two main business units, are the leading in-house candidates to become the company’s next CEO, according to people with knowledge of the process.
At the same time, the creative software maker has tapped search firm Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. to look for external candidates, particularly those who have experience developing or monetizing artificial intelligence products at scale, the people said.
As part of the search, Microsoft Corp. Executive Vice President Charles Lamanna held discussions with Adobe about the role, but ultimately opted against continuing with the process, according to another person familiar with the process. Lamanna oversees a swath of product development at Microsoft, including efforts to weave AI into business applications.
Adobe declined to comment on the CEO search. Microsoft declined to comment on Lamanna’s involvement. Heidrick & Struggles didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The top maker of software for creative professionals, Adobe is facing mounting competition from AI-native tools. Along with software-as-a-service peers, the company has seen its valuation decline over fears of losing ground. The stock has dropped 59% from an early 2024 peak in an example of the so-called SaaSpocalypse.
Shantanu Narayen, who has led the company for nearly two decades, announced in March that he would step down from his role after finding a successor. He will remain chairman of the board.
Announcing a search publicly seemed to throw into question a long-standing view inside Adobe: that Wadhwani was its heir apparent.
He leads the business unit with flagship creative tools, including Photoshop and Acrobat, which contribute about three-fourths of the company’s revenue — $17.7 billion last year. He worked his way up through the company before leaving in 2015 to lead AppDynamics, a software startup that in 2017 was acquired by Cisco Systems Inc. for $3.7 billion. After a stint as a venture partner at Greylock, he rejoined Adobe in 2021 as executive vice president.
The company’s recent stock performance likely creates pressure to demonstrate a complete search, said Jackson Ader, an analyst at KeyBanc. “If this were two years ago, I’m not sure they would have done a big external search. It probably would have just gone to Wadhwani,” he said.
The other internal executive being closely considered is Chakravarthy. He leads Adobe’s marketing and analytics software business, which generated $5.9 billion in sales in the 2025 fiscal year, about a quarter of the company’s total. Prior to joining Adobe in 2020, Chakravarthy was CEO of data integration company Informatica Inc.
The business unit Chakravarthy leads is largely viewed as a complement to the creative business, which remains the primary focus for investors, said Michael Turrin, an analyst at Wells Fargo. Still, one could argue that Adobe has picked up ground in this segment by focusing on larger customers and better connecting it to the rest of its business, he said.
Adobe has worked to weave artificial intelligence tools through its platform. That includes its own well-used range of AI models meant to generate imagery without copyright risks. Still, Wall Street remains unconvinced this will be enough to prevent a loss of market share to AI-native products and upstarts.
In an interview on the tech podcast TBPN in April, Chakravarthy said that as long as Adobe continues to increase its revenue in the double-digits with healthy margins, it should help show the skeptics on Wall Street. “Continuing to see that for the next couple of years I think will change a lot of minds,” he said.
Heidrick & Struggles has been looking for executives who may be able to reverse Adobe’s fortunes, focusing on those who have experience with cutting-edge AI tools, according to those familiar with its process. The search firm also is considering some leaders with more of an operational background running large organizations.
The hiring of Heidrick & Struggles may not result in an external hire as Adobe’s next CEO. The firm participated in the recent executive search for Walt Disney Co. that led to the choice of Josh D’Amaro, who at the time was the head of the company’s theme parks, cruises and consumer products division.
“While some investors will want an ‘AI native’ product guru, the reality is there is no silver bullet for reshaping the business overnight,” wrote Kirk Materne, an analyst at Evercore ISI, after the CEO search was announced in March. “Adobe is a big boat to turn.”
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