Adobe and Semrush jointly announced that they have reached a final acquisition agreement, under which Adobe will acquire Semrush for $12 per share, totaling approximately $1.9 billion in cash, representing a premium of about 75% over its closing price on Tuesday. The transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2026, pending approval from Semrush's shareholders and regulatory authorities.

Adobe stated that the acquisition aims to complete the marketing technology puzzle of its Digital Experience division, combining traditional SEO with emerging "Generative Engine Optimization" (GEO) into an integrated SaaS solution, helping brands optimize visibility across Google search and AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Grok, and Perplexity. According to Adobe Analytics data, traffic from generative AI conversations on retail websites increased by 1200% year-over-year in October 2024, and brands urgently need new tools to capture this growth.

Semrush has already launched a GEO toolkit that automatically detects the number of mentions of web pages on major AI engines, the quality of summaries, and sentiment, and provides keyword and structured data optimization suggestions. Adobe plans to integrate the GEO module into Experience Cloud, sharing data with Experience Manager, Customer Journey Analytics, and GenStudio to form a "content creation - SEO/GEO - advertising - conversion analysis" loop.

After the transaction, Semrush CEO Oleg Shchegolev will continue to report to Anil Chakravarthy, President of Adobe's Digital Experience business, and will be responsible for integrating the GEO product line. Adobe expects that the combined business will contribute approximately $500 million in annual recurring revenue by 2027 and increase the operating profit margin of the digital experience division by about 1 percentage point.