Adobe bolsters AI marketing tools with $1.9 billion Semrush buy

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(Reuters) -Adobe will acquire software platform Semrush for $1.9 billion, the companies said on Wednesday, as the Photoshop maker looks to strengthen its marketing tools and attract brands with generative artificial intelligence products.

The company will pay $12 per share for Semrush, representing a premium of around 77.5% to its stock’s last closing price. Semrush shares jumped 75% to $11.83 in premarket trading.

Semrush designs and develops AI software that helps companies with search engine optimization, social media and digital advertising.

The acquisition, expected to close in the first half of next year, would allow Adobe to help marketers better understand how their brands are viewed by online consumers through searches on websites and generative AI bots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the deal earlier in the day.

Adobe’s tools, which also include InDesign, Acrobat and Illustrator, have become household names in design software, widely used by enterprises, students and creative professionals to edit, create websites, brochures and graphics.

The company also provides “Adobe Experience Cloud” to help companies with data and analytics.

But investor pressure to ramp up monetization of AI products and features amid intensifying competition in the digital design industry has weighed on its shares, which have fallen more than 27% so far this year.

Adobe had said in October its video and image editing tools could be controlled by chatting with them. The company also said it was working with OpenAI to let users directly control one of its apps through ChatGPT.

(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)