Adobe is pushing AI agents into the boardroom before someone else does.
The software outfit has launched CX Enterprise, an agent-based platform meant to automate chunks of digital marketing and customer experience work, timed for its Las Vegas customer experience conference.
Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen said: “You’re going to get new AI-first applications. There’s no question associated with that, and the business models are going to change,” as the firm tries to look like the disruptor rather than the disrupted.
Adobe rode the early AI hype with its Firefly models, but lately it has had a harder job selling investors on the idea that it will not get eaten by AI-native rivals.
The threat from outfits like Anthropic and OpenAI has been rattling markets for months, with about $300 billion wiped off software and data stocks, according to the report.
Adobe shares are down about 30 per cent this year, while the company said revenue rose 12 per cent to $6.40 billion in the quarter ended 27 February.
In March, Narayen said he would step down after 18 years, and the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street promptly split into camps that either clapped politely or muttered about uncertainty.
Adobe, senior vice president of product for customer experience orchestration, Amit Ahuja said, “CX Enterprise is 100% a massive step toward saying, ‘Hey, this is how you can use our technology, which we see as incredibly vital in this AI era,’” while admitting the investor nerves were hardly imaginary.
“None of us has our heads in the sand as to not see what the investor questions are,” Ahuja said.
Alongside CX Enterprise, Adobe is pitching an agent called Adobe CX Enterprise Coworker, which it says can run tasks on its own, herd other agents, turn business data into a marketing plan, and then push it out.
Adobe said it is partnering with more than 30 firms, including Amazon’s cloud business, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI and Nvidia, so customers can run agents across platforms for marketing work.
Narayen said that model providers were the underlying infrastructure, and that the operating system and token usage for them would be provided by Adobe.
Rivals are not exactly dozing off, with Canva rolling out AI agent capabilities last week and Anthropic launching a design tool called Claude Design on 17 April.
Narayen said: “This is a multihundred-billion-dollar total addressable market. It’s inconsistent to believe that it’s not going to attract new players who come in and say, ‘I’m going to try and get a piece of that pie.’”
Narayen will stay on as board chair through the transition and says he wants to return to product work, while working with Adobe’s lead independent director, Frank Calderoni, to choose a successor.
“It’s a phenomenal opportunity for somebody else to put his or her stamp on the company for the next generation. I definitely want somebody who appreciates what makes Adobe special and expands and extends that,” Narayen said
