Adobe Inc. is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California. In 1982, John Warnock and Charles Geschke left Xerox PARC and established Adobe to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. [1] Apple Computer licensed PostScript in 1985 for use in its LaserWriter printers, which helped spark the desktop publishing revolution. [2] The company has acquired 25 companies, purchased stakes in five, and divested six, most of which were software companies. Of the companies that Adobe has acquired, 18 were based in the United States. Adobe has not released the financial details for most of these mergers and acquisitions.
Adobe's first acquisition was Emerald City Software in March 1990. In August 1994, the company acquired Aldus Corporation, a Seattle-based software company credited with creating the desktop publishing industry with its PageMaker software. [3] The company's products were integrated into Adobe's product line later in the year, and re-branded as Adobe PageMaker and Adobe After Effects; [4] Aldus also owned the TIFF file format, transferring ownership to Adobe. [5] In October 1995, Adobe acquired the desktop publishing software company Frame Technology for US$566 million, and re-branded its FrameMaker software to Adobe FrameMaker. [6] Adobe acquired GoLive Systems in January 1999 and obtained its CyberStudio HTML editor software, releasing it as Adobe GoLive. [7] In May 2003, Adobe acquired Syntrillium Software and its digital audio editor software Cool Edit Pro, and merged it into its product line, re-releasing it as Adobe Audition. [8]
In the 1990s, Adobe purchased a minority stake in four companies, and it purchased a stake in one company in the 2000s. Adobe has also divested six companies, in which parts of the company are sold to another company. All of its divestments were made in the 1990s, with its most recent divestment made in August 1999 when it sold Macromedia Pathware to Lotus Software.
Number | Company | Country | Acquired on | Acquired for (USD) | References |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Emerald City Software | ![]() | March 19, 1990 | — | [9] |
2 | BluePoint Technologies | ![]() | June 20, 1990 | — | [10] |
3 | LaserTools-Language Tech [note 1] | ![]() | June 1, 1992 | — | [11] |
4 | OCR Systems | ![]() | June 29, 1992 | — | [12] |
5 | Nonlinear Technologies | ![]() | 1992 | — | [13] |
6 | After Hours Software | ![]() | 1993 | — | [13] |
7 | Compumation | ![]() | 1994 | — | [13] |
8 | Aldus Corporation | ![]() | August 31, 1994 | $437,676,000 | [14] |
9 | LaserTools | ![]() | September 9, 1994 | — | [15] |
10 | Photoshop | ![]() | 1995 | — | [16] |
11 | Frame Technology | ![]() | October 30, 1995 | $566,567,000 | [17] |
12 | Ares Software | ![]() | May 20, 1996 | — | [18] |
13 | Sandcastle | ![]() | March 14, 1997 | $3,500,000 | [19] |
14 | HyWay Ferranti | ![]() | September 5, 1997 | — | [20] |
15 | DigiDox | ![]() | September 16, 1997 | — | [21] |
16 | GoLive Systems | ![]() | January 4, 1999 | — | [22] |
17 | Fotiva | ![]() | December 5, 2001 | — | [23] |
18 | Accelio [note 2] | ![]() | April 15, 2002 | $72,000,000 | [24] |
19 | Syntrillium Software | ![]() | May 2003 | — | [25] |
20 | Yellow Dragon Software-Tech [note 3] | ![]() | November 10, 2003 | — | [26] |
21 | Q-Link Technologies, Inc. | ![]() | May 3, 2004 | — | [27] |
22 | OKYZ | ![]() | December 7, 2004 | — | [28] |
23 | Macromedia | ![]() | December 3, 2005 | $3,573,000,000 | [29] |
24 | Navisware | ![]() | December 16, 2005 | — | [30] |
25 | Trade and Technologies France | ![]() | April 21, 2006 | — | [31] |
26 | Pixmantec | ![]() | June 26, 2006 | — | [32] |
27 | InterAKT | ![]() | September 5, 2006 | — | [33] |
28 | Serious Magic Inc. | ![]() | October 19, 2006 | — | [34] |
29 | Scene7 | ![]() | May 31, 2007 | — | [35] |
30 | Virtual Ubiquity | ![]() | October 1, 2007 | — | [36] |
31 | YaWah | ![]() | September 15, 2008 | — | [37] |
32 | Business Catalyst | ![]() | August 31, 2009 | — | [38] |
33 | Omniture | ![]() | September 15, 2009 | $1,800,000,000 | [39] |
34 | Day Software | ![]() | July 28, 2010 | $240,000,000 | [40] |
35 | Demdex | ![]() | January 18, 2011 | — | [41] |
36 | EchoSign | ![]() | July 18, 2011 | — | [42] |
37 | Iridas Technology | ![]() | September 8, 2011 | — | [43] |
38 | Nitobi | ![]() | October 3, 2011 | — | [44] |
39 | Typekit | ![]() | October 3, 2011 | — | [45] |
40 | Auditude | ![]() | November 1, 2011 | $120,000,000 | [46] |
41 | Efficient Frontier Technology | ![]() | November 30, 2011 | — | [47] |
42 | Behance Inc. | ![]() | December 21, 2012 | — | [48] |
43 | Neolane | ![]() | July 23, 2013 | $600,000,000 | [49] [50] |
44 | Satellite | ![]() | July 31, 2013 | — | |
45 | Aviary | ![]() | September 22, 2014 | — | [51] |
46 | Fotolia | ![]() | January 28, 2015 | $800,000,000 | [52] |
47 | Mixamo | ![]() | June 1, 2015 | — | [53] |
48 | Livefyre | ![]() | May 10, 2016 | — | [54] |
49 | TubeMogul | ![]() | November 10, 2016 | $540,000,000 | [55] |
50 | Sayspring | ![]() | April 16, 2018 | — | [56] |
51 | Uru | ![]() | April 29, 2018 | — | [57] |
52 | Magento | ![]() | May 21, 2018 | $1,680,000,000 | [58] |
53 | Marketo | ![]() | September 20, 2018 | $4,750,000,000 | [59] |
54 | Allegorithmic | ![]() | January 23, 2019 | — | [60] |
55 | Workfront | ![]() | November 9, 2020 | $1,500,000,000 | [61] |
56 | Frame.io | ![]() | October 7, 2021 | $1,275,000,000 | [62] |
57 | ContentCal | ![]() | December 8, 2021 | — | [63] |
58 | Abstract Notebooks | ![]() | December 23, 2021 | — | [64] |
59 | rephrase.ai | ![]() | 2023 | — | [65] |
Adobe also owns the assets of numerous companies, through less direct means, through the mergers or acquisitions of companies later acquired by Adobe.
Date | Company | Business | Country | Value (USD) | References |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
September 21, 1992 | Verity | Computer consulting | ![]() | — | [68] |
March 1, 1994 | Crosswise | Applications software | ![]() | — | [69] |
April 19, 1995 | Siebel Systems | Application services provider | ![]() | — | [70] |
August 8, 1995 | Fractal Design | Graphics software | ![]() | $2,000,000 | [71] |
March 23, 2007 | Skysoft | Online digital music services | ![]() | $1,000,000 | [72] |
Date | Acquirer | Target company | Target business | Acquirer country | Value (USD) | References |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
November 1, 1991 | Paracomp | MacroMind | Software | ![]() | — | [73] |
March 28, 1996 | — | Luminous [note 4] | Graphics software | ![]() | — | [74] |
February 5, 1997 | INSO | MasterSoft | Publishing software | ![]() | $3,000,000 | [75] |
March 24, 1999 | Creative Internet Solutions | ChangeMedia | Internet service provider | ![]() | — | [76] |
May 20, 1999 | Calian Technologies Ltd. | Why Interactive | Multi-media company | ![]() | $4,360,000 | [77] |
August 30, 1999 | Lotus Development | Macromedia Pathware | Internet software | ![]() | — | [78] |
Adobe Inc., formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to video/audio editing, mobile app development, print layout and animation software. It has historically specialized in software for the creation and publication of a wide range of content, including graphics, photography, illustration, animation, multimedia/video, motion pictures, and print. Its flagship products include Adobe Photoshop image editing software; Adobe Illustrator vector-based illustration software; Adobe Acrobat Reader and the Portable Document Format (PDF); and a host of tools primarily for audio-visual content creation, editing and publishing. Adobe offered a bundled solution of its products named Adobe Creative Suite, which evolved into a subscription software as a service (SaaS) offering named Adobe Creative Cloud. The company also expanded into digital marketing software and in 2021 was considered one of the top global leaders in Customer Experience Management (CXM).
Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide.
Adobe RoboHelp is a help authoring tool (HAT) developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows. RoboHelp was created by Gen Kiyooka, and Blue Sky Software released version 1.0 in January 1992.
Aldus Corporation was an American software company best known for its pioneering desktop publishing software. PageMaker, the company's most well-known product, ushered in the modern era of desktop computers such as the Macintosh seeing widespread use in the publishing industry. Paul Brainerd, the company's co-founder, coined the term desktop publishing to describe this paradigm. The company also originated the Tag Image File Format (TIFF) file format, widely used in the digital graphics profession.
Macromedia, Inc. was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe Systems on December 3, 2005.
FlashPaper was a software application developed by Blue Pacific Software before its acquisition by Macromedia, which was later acquired by Adobe Systems. Its functional design mimics Adobe Acrobat Distiller to behave as a virtual printer. Documents printed to FlashPaper can be printed as Adobe Flash or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
PressWise was digital imposition software to quickly and easily impose most any variety of flat and folding layouts. It was acquired by the Aldus Prepress Group affectionately known in the print and publishing industry as the Aldus WiseGuys in August 1991 from Emulation Technologies Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio. It was further developed by the Aldus Press Group and launched as the first of many Aldus prepress products in 1993. It was subsequently owned by Adobe Systems, then Luminous Corporation (Seattle), then Imation, and finally ScenicSoft. PressWise was discontinued by ScenicSoft in 1999 ultimately.
Bruce R. Chizen is an American technology executive. He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Adobe Systems from 2000 to 2007.
Allaire Corporation was a computer software company founded by Jeremy and JJ Allaire in Minnesota, later headquartered in Cambridge, then Newton, Massachusetts. It commenced operations in May 1995, had its initial public offering on NASDAQ in January 1999, and was acquired by rival Macromedia in early 2001.
Shantanu Narayen is an Indian-American business executive who has been the chairman, president, and chief executive officer (CEO) of Adobe Inc. since December 2007. Before this, he was the company's president and chief operating officer since 2005.
Omniture is an online marketing and web analytics business unit in Orem, Utah. It was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2009. Until 2011, Omniture operated as a business unit within Adobe as the "Omniture Business Unit", but as of 2012 Adobe began retiring the Omniture name as former Omniture products were integrated into the Adobe Marketing Cloud.
Scene7 is an American on-demand rich media software company that provides document hosting and interactive publishing services such as online catalogs, targeted email, video, and image management. Retailers use the company's services to showcase products on their websites and to allow customers to interact with the products. Scene7's technology allows users to manipulate product images by zooming in and rotating products, simulating the inspection of merchandise in retail stores.
Adobe FreeHand is a discontinued computer application for creating two-dimensional vector graphics oriented primarily to professional illustration, desktop publishing and content creation for the Web. FreeHand was similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Xara Designer Pro. Because of FreeHand's dedicated page layout and text control features, it also compares to Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress. Professions using FreeHand include graphic design, illustration, cartography, fashion and textile design, product design, architects, scientific research, and multimedia production.
Adobe Experience Cloud (AEC), formerly Adobe Marketing Cloud (AMC), is a collection of integrated online marketing and web analytics products by Adobe.
Figma is a collaborative web application for interface design, with additional offline features enabled by desktop applications for macOS and Windows. The feature set of Figma focuses on user interface and user experience design, with an emphasis on real-time collaboration, utilising a variety of vector graphics editor and prototyping tools. The Figma mobile app for Android and iOS allows viewing and interacting with Figma prototypes in real-time on mobile and tablet devices.