Inside Adobe's Partnerships With OpenAI, Anthropic and NVIDIA | Sahil Gupta

How Adobe balances collaboration and competition in AI partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Cloud and NVIDIA

Senior Director of Partnerships Sahil Gupta discusses how Adobe structures technology alliances with leading AI companies while maintaining product leadership. The conversation covers recent Adobe Summit announcements, the NVIDIA collaboration, and practical strategies for co-innovation with partners that can also be competitors.

The episode breaks down where partnerships originate, what a partnerships leader actually does day-to-day, and how Adobe integrates multiple models into Firefly to enhance customer experience. Listeners will hear concrete examples of governance, model selection, and long-term planning in an evolving AI ecosystem.

Key Topics Covered:

• Structure of Adobe’s partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Cloud and Microsoft and how agentic capabilities are surfaced
• The NVIDIA collaboration: 3D digital twins, agent governance, and the next generation of Firefly models
• Co-innovation strategies when working with partners who are also competitors
• Differences in partnering with long-standing companies like IBM versus newer AI firms
• Bringing over 30 models, including startups such as Runway, into Firefly
• Implications for the future of work and practical lessons from NVIDIA’s leadership

Episode Timestamps:

00:00 Intro
00:36 Competing and co-innovating with partners
01:22 How Sahil kept ending up at the center of industry moments
03:01 What a Senior Director of Partnerships actually does
04:03 Where partnerships actually come from
06:24 What Adobe announced at Summit
07:40 The NVIDIA partnership explained
10:28 Navigating partnerships with companies you also compete with
12:06 Working with 30 year partners versus brand new ones
13:43 What partnerships Adobe is building toward next
15:23 Why everything comes back to customer experience
17:54 How Sahil ended up in partnerships
19:27 The future of work and the radiology lesson
22:15 Why do you do what you do

About the Guest:

Sahil Gupta is Senior Director of Partnerships at Adobe, leading technology partnerships across major AI providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Cloud and NVIDIA. He focuses on aligning partner capabilities with Adobe’s product roadmap, managing co-innovation, and resolving the tensions that arise when partners are also competitors.

About the Company:

Adobe is a leader in creative and digital experience software, known for tools like Photoshop and Illustrator and for developing generative AI capabilities such as Firefly. The company integrates a wide range of models and partnerships to deliver improved customer experiences and to scale AI-powered creative workflows.