Adobe

Adobe is an American software company founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, two researchers from Xerox's lab in Palo Alto. Its first product, PostScript, was a language that described a page so that any printer could print it exactly. That idea of a page that looks the same everywhere led, in 1993, to the PDF format and the Acrobat software to read and create it. PDF later became an open ISO standard.

Adobe also makes the tools most creative professionals use: Photoshop for editing photos, Illustrator for drawings and logos, InDesign for magazines and books, Premiere Pro for video and Lightroom for organizing and developing photos. In recent years it added generative AI to them, through its own Firefly models, so you can fill or extend an image by describing what you want.

For decades Adobe sold its programs in boxes, for a single large payment. In 2013 it switched to Creative Cloud, a monthly or yearly subscription, and today most of its money comes from subscriptions: Creative Cloud for creative work, Document Cloud for Acrobat and PDFs, and Experience Cloud, software that helps large companies run their websites, marketing campaigns and analytics.