Adobe Inc. has agreed to buy marketing software company Semrush Holdings Inc. for $1.9 billion, marking its first acquisition announcement since its failed $20 billion purchase of Figma Inc. in 2022.
The all-cash deal will value Semrush at $12 per share and is expected to close in the first half of 2026, Adobe said in a statement on Wednesday. The acquisition would be Adobe’s third largest, after the purchase of Marketo, for around US$4.75 billion in 2018, and Macromedia, for around US$3.4 billion in 2005.
The announcement sent Semrush shares soaring as much as 75% to a record high of $11.83 after markets opened in New York — its biggest intraday gain since the company went public in March 2021. Adobe shares fell as much as 2.2%.
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Semrush is a platform that allows companies to analyze and optimize their online marketing, including how their brand appears in AI search results. The acquisition will help Adobe deliver “a comprehensive solution that gives marketers a holistic understanding of how their brands appear across owned channels, LLMs, traditional search engines and the web at large,” the company said in the statement.
Best known for software used by creators, such as Photoshop, Adobe also offers a suite of marketing and analytics tools, which has generated a growing share of its revenue. Still, Adobe shares have struggled this year due to concerns that advances in AI could harm its core business. The company has lost about a quarter of its value this year as of Tuesday’s close.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that a deal was close.
Adobe dropped its proposed acquisition of Figma in 2023 after facing resistance from regulators in Europe and the United Kingdom. The acquisition would have been one of the largest ever made of a private software developer.
