Adobe is nearing a $1.9 billion deal to acquire Semrush, a software platform that helps businesses run better search-engine optimization as reliance on artificial intelligence increases, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Semrush shares rocketed 70% on the news.

The details

A deal could be finalized as soon as Wednesday, the people said, cautioning the talks could still fall apart.

Adobe is set to pay $12 a share for Semrush, which had a market value of a little over $1 billion as of Tuesday after its stock closed at $6.76.

Semrush went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021. It designs and develops software that helps firms with online advertising, social media research and research campaigns, among other things. 

The deal would be a relatively small bite for Adobe, which has a market value of over $135 billion. 

Adobe is best known by consumers for its software programs—including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Analytics—used for graphic design, video editing, document management and more.

The context

Adobe’s stock has dropped more than 20% so far this year, as investors wait to see if the company can grow into the artificial-intelligence powerhouse it wants to be.

Semrush shares also have been beaten down amid a broader selloff of tech stocks. The business has touted its adoption of AI, particularly around search. It recently unveiled a new tool that helps marketers boost and measure their performance with both SEO and AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

Some of Semrush’s big enterprise customers include TikTok and Amazon. 

An acquisition of Semrush would allow Adobe to help marketers better understand how their brands are presented to consumers online—not just through traditional search engines but also new large language models, or LLMs. 

Adobe in September raised its fiscal-year outlook for the second time this year and said that its spending on AI was starting to pay off. It said customers were starting to opt into its more premium offerings so that they could have access to those new capabilities.

Adobe in 2022 tried to buy collaboration-software company Figma for around $20 billion, in what would have been its biggest deal ever. But the transaction was called off over a year later, after a U.K. regulator warned that it would likely harm innovation.