Adobe has announced the acquisition of Semrush Holdings for $1.9 billion (approximately €1.65 billion) in a transaction that is much more than a simple merger of technology companies. This move is presented as a fundamental component in the strategy that Adobe has undertaken in recent years to become the ultimate 360° platform for marketing, eCommerce, and digital experience.
Additionally, of course, Adobe anticipates that this will provide a substantial source of business revenue.
In fact, in its statement, Adobe explains that in the past quarter, Semrush increased its annual recurring revenue from its enterprise client segment by 33% year over year, among which are companies such as Amazon and TikTok.
Adobe, famous for its Creative Cloud suite of design tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, InDesign) and its business suite Digital Experience Cloud (which includes products like Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Commerce, formerly Magento), has been building an ecosystem to manage customer experience on a global scale. However, the growing trend of consumers turning to language models such as ChatGPT and Gemini for information and purchasing recommendations was creating a gap in the visibility strategies of brands.
This is where Semrush comes into play. Semrush is not only a leading reference in the field of SEO tools; it has also developed multiple solutions related to generative engine optimization (GEO). This approach is crucial, as generative AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites increased by 1,200% year over year in October, according to data from Adobe Analytics.
Adobe aims to integrate all these capabilities to ensure that its clients remain relevant in this evolving landscape. Anil Chakravarthy, President of Adobe’s Digital Experience Business, expressed it clearly: “With Semrush, we are unlocking GEO for marketers as a new growth channel alongside their SEO, driving greater visibility, customer engagement, and conversions across the entire ecosystem.”
In the statement, Adobe explains that “With its GEO capabilities and over a decade of SEO experience, Semrush helps brands enhance their visibility and expand their audience reach. Semrush’s solutions address an essential and growing need for marketers: maintaining visibility in AI-powered search. As marketers increasingly turn to their SEO teams and partners to drive their generative AI marketing strategies, Semrush provides powerful solutions for achieving brand visibility and relevance.”
The ultimate strategic objective is to create a comprehensive solution that provides marketers with a holistic understanding of how their brands appear across all touchpoints: owned channels, LLMs, traditional search, and the web at large. Thanks to this operation, a brand can utilize the Adobe platform to create content (Creative Cloud), manage and personalize it (Experience Manager), measure its performance (Analytics), and now, optimize its discoverability in traditional and AI-driven search (Semrush).
Indeed, Semrush CEO, Bill Wagner, highlighted that the combination of both companies provides marketers with “more insights and capabilities to increase their discoverability across the current digital landscape.”
The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2026, once all necessary regulatory approvals have been obtained. The underlying message from Adobe is clear: “Brand visibility is being transformed by generative AI, and brands that do not leverage this new opportunity risk losing relevance and revenue.”
With the acquisition of Semrush, Adobe expects that its clients will be at the forefront of this transformation.
Image: Gemini
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