



Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen leaves after 18 years; schoolmate Satya Nadella applauds 'empathy to creative process'
shaped by AI, by new workflows and by entirely new forms of expression. Adobe has never waited for the future to arrive. We’ve anticipated it.
We’ve built it. And we’ve led it,” he wrote in an email to employees on 9 March, doffing his hat to them.Narayen was the first among Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google and Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai, and IBM honcho Aravind Krishna to take the top seat. He also becomes the first among the four to walk into the sunset.During his stint, Narayen steered Adobe through the 2008 economic crisis, as well as the enterprise cloud migration era of the mid-2010s.
Adobe’s revenue went from $3.58 billion in fiscal 2008 (Adobe counts its financial cycle from December to November) to $23.8 billion in fiscal 2025—a compound annual growth rate of 12% to Adobe’s top line.Adobe’s share price, went from $42 apiece when Narayen took charge, to nearly $270 at Thursday’s market close. It reached a high of $689 apiece in November 2021, at that time returning a compound 22% annually since December 2008.In comparison, Nadella, who took his role in February 2014, saw Microsoft’s share price rise from $38 each to $402 at Thursday’s closing. Its operating revenue rose from $86.8 billion during Nadella’s first fiscal in charge, to $282 billion in fiscal 2025.
Its accounting year runs from July to June.Pichai’s stint at Alphabet saw the company’s top line rise from $75 billion in fiscal 2015, to $402.8 billion as of fiscal 2025. The company counts its financial cycle from January to December.Krishna, meanwhile, has been in charge of IBM for five full fiscals now. During this time, the company’s revenue has dropped from $73.6 billion in fiscal 2020 to $67.5 billion in fiscal 2025.
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