Adobe’s Board of Directors named Anil Chakravarthy as the company’s next president and chief executive officer, succeeding Shantanu Narayen. Chakravarthy was set to take charge on December 1 and also join Adobe’s Board of Directors.
Chakravarthy served as president of Adobe’s Customer Experience Orchestration business and worldwide field operations. Narayen, who led the company for 18 years, transitioned to the role of executive chair. He joined Adobe in 1998.
Chakravarthy joined Adobe in January 2020 as executive vice president and general manager of its Digital Experience business. That year, he also became the person in charge of Adobe’s worldwide field operations for its enterprise customers across the company’s entire product range.
In December 2021, he was promoted to president of Digital Experience and worldwide field operations at Adobe.
Before joining Adobe, Chakravarthy was the CEO of Informatica for four years. He joined the enterprise cloud data management company in 2013 as an executive vice president.
Before joining Adobe, Chakravarthy held executive positions at Symantec and VeriSign, and he was also affiliated with McKinsey & Company. His professional career spanned various aspects of the technology sector.
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He holds a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from the Institute of Technology, Varanasi, India. He also holds a Master of Science and a Ph.D. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In his current role at Adobe, Chakravarthy led the expansion of the company’s Customer Experience Orchestration business through innovative growth. Under his leadership, products such as Adobe CX Enterprise, GenStudio, and Brand Visibility were developed and launched, leveraging AI to deliver customer experience.
Adobe credited Chakravarthy with helping scale Adobe Experience Platform and introducing product innovations such as CX Enterprise Coworker. He also championed Adobe’s acquisitions and integration of Workfront and Semrush, according to the company.
Speaking about his appointment, Chakravarthy said he was honored to take on the role at a pivotal time for Adobe. He said his focus was on driving growth and strengthening Adobe’s leadership in agentic software across creativity, productivity and customer experience.
He also credited Narayen’s leadership in transforming Adobe’s business and said the company was well positioned for its next phase of growth.
“I want to thank the Board for the confidence they’ve placed in me. I look forward to working closely with our employees, Shantanu, and the Board of Directors to continue serving our customers and transforming Adobe in the era of AI,” he added.
Narayen’s transition to executive chair marked the end of his 18-year tenure as Adobe’s leader. At the same time, Chakravarthy’s appointment placed a technology executive with experience across Adobe, Informatica, Symantec, VeriSign and McKinsey at the helm of the company.