Adobe

In April 2025, Adobe's Chief People Officer announced the company would 'discontinue' DEI hiring targets, ending 'aspirational representational goals' set in 2020. These had included doubling Black representation and increasing women in leadership to 30% by 2025. The company's Corporate Responsibility page was also removed from the website after Trump's January 2025 executive order targeting DEI.

In June 2024, the FTC filed a federal lawsuit against Adobe and executives David Wadhwani and Maninder Sawhney, alleging the company pushed consumers toward annual-paid-monthly plans while burying early termination fees worth hundreds of dollars. The complaint also accused Adobe of making cancellation deliberately difficult through multiple pages, dropped calls, and resistance from customer service representatives.

In June 2024, Adobe updated its terms of service requiring users to agree to give the company access to their content via 'automated and manual methods.' The vague language went viral as creatives feared Adobe would use their work to train its Firefly AI model or access NDA-protected projects. Adobe quickly responded with a blog post calling it a 'misunderstanding' and on June 24, 2024 released updated terms explicitly stating users own their content and Adobe would not train generative AI on customer content except for Adobe Stock submissions.

Before discontinuing DEI hiring targets in 2025, Adobe had built a strong equality record. The company achieved global gender pay parity, with women and men receiving dollar-for-dollar equal pay for comparable roles. Adobe scored 100% on the HRC Corporate Equality Index for over 7 consecutive years, indicating comprehensive LGBTQ+ workplace protections. The company offered 26 weeks paid maternity leave and 16 weeks for non-birth parents, and supported employee networks including Adobe Pride, Adobe Women's Leadership, and Black@Adobe.

Adobe's proposed $20 billion acquisition of collaborative design tool Figma was terminated in December 2023 after facing antitrust scrutiny from the US DOJ, UK CMA, and European Commission. Regulators expressed concerns that the merger would reduce competition and innovation in the design software market. Adobe paid a $1 billion reverse termination fee. The DOJ Antitrust Division stated the abandonment 'ensures that designers, creators, and consumers continue to get the benefit of the rivalry between the two companies.'

Adobe trained its Firefly generative AI model on licensed Adobe Stock content and public domain works rather than scraping the web. The company developed Content Credentials, an industry-standard metadata system acting as a 'digital nutrition label' for AI-generated content. Adobe also implemented a creator opt-out preference allowing artists to indicate they don't want their content used for AI training, embedded via Content Credentials. Adobe began paying annual Firefly bonuses to contributing Stock artists in September 2023.

Adobe has maintained carbon neutrality in global operations since 2019, reduced Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 47% from 2018 to 2023, and accelerated its 100% renewable electricity goal from 2035 to 2025. The company set near-term targets including 42% reduction in absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions and 52% reduction in Scope 3 emissions per USD value added by FY 2030. In January 2023, Adobe opened Founders Tower, the first all-electric building of its scale powered by 100% renewable energy in Silicon Valley.

Since 2021, Adobe and the Adobe Foundation launched the Equity and Advancement Initiative (EAI) to address educational inequities and promote diversity in tech and creative industries. The Foundation partnered with 11 nonprofit organizations addressing social and racial justice issues, donating $30 million plus Adobe product donations. In 2024, the Foundation announced an additional $5 million in continued fourth-year funding. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen joined CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion, and the company became a founding member of Parity.org.

In November 2019, Adobe co-founded the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) alongside The New York Times and Twitter to establish an industry standard for content provenance metadata. The initiative promotes Content Credentials, defined by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). By January 2026, the CAI had grown to over 6,000 members including BBC, Microsoft, Nikon, Qualcomm, and The Washington Post. In 2024, Adobe launched a free Content Authenticity web app allowing creators to add verifiable attribution details and opt-out of generative AI training.