Adobe is facing a compounding leadership vacuum after chief financial officer Dan Durn confirmed his departure, weeks after chief executive Shantanu Narayen announced he was leaving the business in March.

Durn is set to take up a role at Marvell Technology, leaving Adobe without two of its most senior executives simultaneously as the company grapples with intensifying competition, a failed mega-acquisition, and mounting pressure from the rapid rise of generative AI.

Adobe shares fell around six percent in extended trading following the announcement, closing at $218.80 in New York.

“Whenever you have a CEO transition, you don’t necessarily want a CFO transition at the same time,” Gil Luria, analyst at D.A. Davidson, told Bloomberg. “Clearly investors right now are uneasy with a transition in both of those positions.”

Adobe has engaged headhunters to find a replacement CFO. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that David Wadhwani and Anil Chakravarthy, heads of the company’s two main business divisions, are the leading internal candidates for the top job.

The dual departures come as Adobe faces an increasingly hostile competitive landscape. Australian creative platform Canva has aggressively eaten into Adobe’s user base, particularly among marketing teams, small businesses, and non-professional designers who view the Creative Suite’s subscription pricing as excessive.

The company’s failure to acquire collaborative design platform Figma for $20 billion, after the deal was blocked by regulators in Europe and the United Kingdom, left Adobe facing a strengthened independent rival rather than neutralising the threat.

Generative AI has compounded the pressure for Adobe.

Tools including Midjourney, Runway, OpenAI’s image generation products, and Google’s Imagen and Veo now compete directly with Adobe’s flagship applications, Photoshop and Premiere Pro, for tasks that once required professional software. Analysts have warned the shift could permanently erode Adobe’s competitive moat.

The company is now searching for both a chief executive and a chief financial officer with no clear timeline for either appointment