Adobe is casting a wide net to find its next chief executive, weighing two senior internal leaders alongside outside candidates as the company prepares for its first leadership transition in nearly two decades.

Shantanu Narayen, who has served as CEO for 18 years, announced in March that he would step down once a successor is named. He will stay on as Board Chair. The move came, somewhat poetically, right after his 100th earnings call at the helm.

The candidates and the process

Two internal names have surfaced as frontrunners. David Wadhwani, who runs Adobe’s Creativity & Productivity division, and Anil Chakravarthy, who leads another major business unit, are both under consideration.

Adobe’s board has set up a special committee to manage the search, led by Lead Independent Director Frank Calderoni. The committee’s mandate covers both internal evaluation and external recruitment, with a particular emphasis on finding someone who can navigate the generative AI landscape that is reshaping Adobe’s core markets.

The Narayen legacy, by the numbers

Under his leadership, Adobe’s annual revenue grew from under $1 billion to over $25 billion. Narayen orchestrated Adobe’s pivot from selling boxed software to a subscription-based model. Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, and Experience Cloud all became massive recurring revenue engines on his watch.

More recently, Narayen pushed Adobe into generative AI with Firefly, the company’s family of AI models designed to generate images, text effects, and other creative assets. Firefly was positioned as a “commercially safe” alternative to competitors, trained on licensed content rather than scraped internet data.

The internal-versus-external dynamic

An internal pick like Wadhwani signals continuity: steady subscription revenue growth, methodical AI integration, and minimal disruption to Adobe’s existing product strategy. An external hire, especially one with a deep AI background, could signal a more aggressive pivot, potentially involving larger AI investments, new product categories, or even acquisitions.

Narayen’s decision to remain as Board Chair provides some guardrails against a dramatic strategic reversal. But it also raises the classic governance question of whether a new CEO can truly chart their own course with a legendary predecessor still sitting at the board table.