Adobe announced on Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire the search engine optimization company Semrush for approximately $1.9 billion in cash. This move is part of the Photoshop maker’s strategy to expand its portfolio of marketing tools.
In a statement, Adobe said it would pay twelve dollars per share for Semrush. This price is nearly double the company’s closing price of six dollars and eighty-nine cents on Tuesday, before news of the deal became public. Semrush had a market value of about one billion dollars at Tuesday’s market close.
With this acquisition, Adobe is making a strategic bet that businesses will invest more in optimizing their online content to be discovered by AI tools. This shift is driven by the growing consumer use of AI chatbots, agents, and browsers for activities like reading news, finding recipes, shopping, and booking travel. This trend opens a significant new market for established SEO companies like Semrush, as changing consumer habits drive more website traffic from generative AI platforms.
Data from Adobe Analytics shows that as of October, traffic to retail websites originating from generative AI chatbots had grown by twelve hundred percent compared to the same period one year earlier.
Semrush has been actively developing its capabilities in what it terms generative engine optimization. The company recently introduced a new tool designed to monitor and enhance website performance. This tool uses both conventional search engine optimization methods and new techniques tailored for AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Grok, and Perplexity.
Anil Chakravarthy, president of Adobe’s Digital Experience Business, stated that brand visibility is being transformed by generative AI. He noted that brands which fail to adapt to this new landscape risk losing both relevance and revenue. He explained that by acquiring Semrush, Adobe aims to provide marketers with generative engine optimization as a new growth channel to complement their existing SEO efforts, ultimately increasing visibility, customer engagement, and sales across the digital ecosystem.