Adobe opens Photoshop and Premiere files to ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude agents as net-new ARR falls 37% to 38%
Coworker is free, and the Google deals carry no price, date or term. With Adobe's new subscription sales falling sharply, December's report will show whether open files and a free agent defend Adobe's licenses or hand the agent layer to its rivals.
Richard Tangthree-minute read
Adobe+1.09% — Adobe, up 1.09 percent today opened the native project files of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects to outside AI agents at its MAX conference on November 10 12. It also gave CX Enterprise Coworker, its marketing agent, free to every licensee of GenStudio, the enterprise marketing platform Adobe sells under license 3.
The two Google partnership documents published that day carry no price, no launch date, no term and no exclusivity 4. Adobe is betting its file formats are worth more open than closed, and it made the bet in a quarter when net-new ARR, the new annual recurring revenue added in the period, fell between 37 and 38 percent 5.
Coworker's zero price is not in Adobe's announcements; it is on the record only because The Next Web asked 35. The multi-year Disney alliance Adobe announced the day before carried the same shape: no disclosed financial terms 24.
The project files were the moat, and Adobe opened the gate
The enabler is the Model Context Protocol, or MCP, the open standard that lets AI agents use other software 1. From a private beta in early 2027, agents from OpenAI$1.18T — OpenAI, private, latest valuation $1.18T, Google and Anthropic$350B — Anthropic, private, latest valuation $350B will edit projects on the user's own computer, with layers and sequences left editable so a person can take over at any point 16.
Nine minutes to nine artboards, and no Google timeline
In Adobe's demo ChatGPT turned one party poster into nine finished, still-editable artboards. The run took about nine minutes 1. Google DeepMind is separately exploring a near-real-time image model for Photoshop, with no timeline attached 74. Agents were going to do this work somewhere; closed files would have forced them to build around Adobe. The same logic had already put Coworker inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot on November 4 34.
The numbers say the giveaway is about defending licenses
Adobe's AI-first ending ARR, the yearly value of subscriptions from its AI products including GenStudio, passed $650 million in the fiscal quarter that ended in August 89. It is still small next to Adobe's $27.5 billion of total annual recurring revenue 9. Carbon Finance, the research firm whose quarterly review of Adobe supplies the growth figures charted below, says the AI growth has yet to show up meaningfully in recurring revenue 5. In that setting a free agent does not add revenue; it defends the licenses already sold.
AI-first ARR grows fast while the net-new line shrinks
Fast AI growth is too small to offset a shrinking net-new base
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| GenStudio ending ARR | 20% |
| AI-first products ARR | 150% |
| Net-new ARR | -38% |
Adobe's own quarterly filings show the same story on the top line 10.
Adobe's revenue growth has stayed between 10% and 13% for three years
Three years of AI investment have kept growth in the same narrow band
Data
| Revenue, change from year earlier | |
|---|---|
| Q4 '23 | 11.6% |
| Q1 '24 | 11.3% |
| Q2 '24 | 10.2% |
| Q3 '24 | 10.6% |
| Q4 '24 | 11.1% |
| Q1 '25 | 10.3% |
| Q2 '25 | 10.6% |
| Q3 '25 | 10.7% |
| Q4 '25 | 10.5% |
| Q1 '26 | 12% |
| Q2 '26 | 12.7% |
| Q3 '26 | 12.9% |
Xfinity, Comcast's−0.26% — Comcast, down 0.26 percent today broadband brand, is already bringing Coworker into how it runs campaigns, with human reviewers keeping the final call 3. Customers are getting real capability at no extra charge; the question sits on Adobe's income statement.
Anthropic shipped the alternative the same day
While Adobe was opening its files, Anthropic, the company behind the Claude assistant, unveiled Claude Sheets, Claude Whiteboards and Claude Meetings in San Francisco 11. It is a workspace that plans, tracks and meets with no Adobe file anywhere in it. Claude can now open full partner applications inside its own interface, with Adobe among the first, the handshake we covered on November 11 11. Adobe has handed its file layer to every agent on the market; its rivals are competing to own the place where work starts.
December's report is the first test of the free-agent bet
Adobe reports fiscal fourth-quarter results in December, the first print under incoming chief executive Anil Chakravarthy, who takes over from Shantanu Narayen on December 1 89. The company's own target is about 10 percent growth in total annual recurring revenue 89. If GenStudio holds its growth while net-new ARR keeps shrinking, the free agent is defending the license base; if GenStudio slows too, distribution alone is not defense 5.
The shares trade near 14 times earnings, well below the market median 9. The announcements give the people who use Adobe's software more capability, and they carry no disclosed revenue for Adobe. Whether they defend the license base is what December's print shows.
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