Adobe announced a deal to acquire frame.io, a cloud-based video collaboration platform, in a transaction worth $1.275 billion.
Adobe said the deal is expected close during the fourth quarter of its 2021 fiscal year (which ends in late November), subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions.
Upon close, frame.io co-founder and CEO Emery Wells and co-founder John Traver will join Adobe. Wells will continue to lead the frame.io team, reporting to Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer and EVP of Adobe Creative Cloud.
Founded in 2015 and launched in March 2016, frame.io says it has more than 1 million users across media and entertainment companies, agencies and brands. The company’s system helps customers manage the video production process by letting editors and other project stakeholders collaborate using cloud-based workflows.
New York-based frame.io had raised about $90 million from investors including FirstMark, Shasta Ventures, Accel, Insight Partners and SignalFire, according to Crunchbase. According to the company, frame.io customers include HBO, Netflix, BuzzFeed, Activision Blizzard, Vice Media, Fox Sports and MasterClass.
Adobe said it plans to further integrate frame.io’s review and approval functionality with its creative software products, including Premiere Pro and After Effects video-editing packages as well as Photoshop, Illustrator and other Adobe Creative Cloud applications.
“We’ve entered a new era of connected creativity that is deeply collaborative, and we imagine a world where everyone can participate in the creative process,” Belsky said in a statement. “With this acquisition, we’re welcoming an incredible customer-oriented team and adding frame.io’s cloud-native workflow capabilities to make the creative process more collaborative, productive, and efficient to further unleash creativity for all.”
In a message to customers about the Adobe deal, Wells recalled how he and Traver launched frame.io “inside the confines of our boutique post-production company in New York City” more than five years ago.
“It was a product built with a deep appreciation for the needs of video professionals, born out of our own experiences as post-production experts,” Wells wrote. As part of Adobe, he added, “we will continue our mission to transform the landscape of video.”
