Adobe fights AI disruption of its own business model with new enterprise agent platform Key Points - Adobe unveiled its "CX Enterprise" platform, which uses AI agents to automate marketing, customer engagement, and sales tasks. - With the new system and partnerships with companies like OpenAI, Adobe is responding to AI-native competitors that have driven its stock down 30 percent. - At the same time, Adobe is searching for a successor to CEO Shantanu Narayen, who is stepping down after 18 years at the helm to serve as chairman of the board. The software giant is responding to growing pressure from AI-native competitors with a new enterprise agent platform.

At the same time, the company is looking for its next chief executive. Adobe unveiled a new AI agent platform called CX Enterprise at its annual conference in Las Vegas. The agent-based system is designed to help businesses automate digital marketing, customer engagement, and sales. According to Adobe, the platform brings together three areas: an AI-powered content supply chain, customer engagement orchestration, and what the company calls "brand visibility" - making sure brands stay visible in a world increasingly shaped by AI agents.

An AI agent called "CX Enterprise Coworker" can handle tasks on its own, like coordinating multiple other agents, gathering relevant business data, building a marketing plan, and executing it. Adobe also announced partnerships with more than 30 AI platforms and companies, including Amazon's cloud division, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Nvidia. The goal is to let customers use AI agents across platforms for digital marketing tasks. Software stocks have lost hundreds of billions in value New AI tools from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI have spooked investors in recent months, wiping out hundreds of billions of dollars in market value across software and data stocks. Adobe's own stock is down roughly 30 percent this year. "You’re going to get new AI-first applications.

There’s no question associated with that, and the business models are going to change," Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen acknowledged, according to the WSJ. Adobe was initially a beneficiary of the AI hype with its in-house Firefly AI models. But the company has struggled to convince investors it can withstand disruption from AI-native competitors. Other incumbents like Salesforce are making similar moves with new agent products to reassure Wall Street. Adobe calls CX Enterprise the broadest agent-based AI ecosystem in the industry. Whether that's enough remains an open question. Design startup Canva announced an update to its AI platform with agent capabilities last week.

And Anthropic released a new design tool called Claude Design on Friday that brings visual design into Claude's product lineup. A leadership change at the worst possible time In March, Narayen announced he would step down after 18 years at the helm. Wall Street's reaction was mixed. Some analysts praised the move, while others warned it added more uncertainty.

Narayen will stay on as chairman of the board and plans to oversee the search for his successor alongside Lead Independent Director Frank Calderoni. Whoever takes over will need to steer Adobe through the age of AI agents. AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Subscribe now.