Adobe

John Warnock and Charles Geschke were researchers at Xerox PARC — the legendary laboratory that had invented the graphical user interface, the mouse, and Ethernet, and commercialised almost none of it. Warnock had developed a page description language called Interpress that could precisely describe how text and graphics should appear on a printed page. Xerox showed no interest in commercialising it. In December 1982, Warnock and Geschke resigned from Xerox and founded Adobe Systems in Warnock's garage in Los Altos, California.

Steve Jobs visited Adobe in early 1983 and was shown PostScript — the page description language that Warnock and Geschke had developed. Jobs wanted to acquire Adobe outright. The founders declined. Jobs reportedly became extremely angry. He settled for a license to use PostScript in Apple's LaserWriter printer and invested in Adobe, acquiring approximately 19% of the company. The LaserWriter, combined with Adobe's PostScript and Aldus PageMaker software, created desktop publishing — the ability to produce professional print materials without a print shop. It transformed publishing, advertising, and graphic design.

Adobe launched the Portable Document Format — PDF — in 1993, along with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. PDF solved a fundamental problem: documents created on one computer could not reliably be viewed on another without the same fonts and software. Adobe distributed the Reader for free, generating revenue from the professional tools needed to create PDFs. The strategy established PDF as the universal document standard. Over 2.5 trillion PDF files exist today.

Adobe announced in 2012 that it would move its creative software — Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere — from perpetual licences to a subscription model called Creative Cloud. Customers who had paid once for software would now pay monthly or annually. The backlash was intense: designers and photographers who had used Adobe software for decades felt they were being forced into a perpetual payment. Adobe's stock fell. Then it rose — dramatically. The subscription model created predictable, recurring revenue that the market valued far more highly than lumpy software sales.

Adobe reported FY2025 revenues of $24.05 billion — up 11% — with Firefly, its generative AI platform, producing 22 billion asset generations by April 2025 and contributing $400 million in direct revenue between 2024 and 2025. Adobe had attempted to acquire Figma — the dominant interface design tool — for $20 billion in September 2022, but regulators in the United States and European Union blocked the deal in December 2023, concluding it would eliminate a significant competitive threat. Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion termination fee. Figma remained independent and began preparing for its own IPO. The company that had invented PostScript, PDF, and the Creative Cloud subscription model was now racing to prove that AI would deepen its competitive moat rather than erode it.