Across every industry, AI is making it easier than ever to turn ideas into reality. Adobe was built for this shift. The Adobe Incubator exists to foster grassroots innovation and turn that entrepreneurial spirit into new products and services for our customers. It’s an internal program that funds and mentors teams as they rapidly develop and test their boldest ideas with customers, accelerating the strongest ideas to market.
Last week Adobe Incubator held its annual Pitch Day, where teams presented their ideas and prototypes to a panel of senior leaders for a coveted spot in the program. This year we received a record 245 applications from across the globe, representing a 50 percent jump compared to last year. Of those, seven finalists took the stage to make the case for why their idea should join the program.
This year's top ideas
The winners will be announced in the coming weeks, but for now we are thrilled to highlight some of the cutting-edge concepts on display.
Below is a sample of the impressive group of AI-first projects reimagining what's possible. Each team of two to five employees had to prepare a business case, a working prototype and a two-minute demo video.
Here’s a first look:
Whether starting with a hummed melody, rhythm or song idea, anyone can use this AI-powered project to build their own song, arranging and refining as they go. Project Dahlia puts its users at the center, authoring their creations with AI as an assistant, from the first note to the final arrangement.
Social content creators today struggle with two big questions – what to create, and whether it will work. This project takes social signals and a content creator’s own style and interests to provide intelligence that answers those two questions and helps creators improve their social performance.
Project Riverlook: Connecting brands with customers locally. Many global brands rely on independent dealers and franchisees to sell locally, but these partners struggle to create on-brand content in the moment. This project lets them deliver brand-compliant, personalized offers by meeting customers in the channels they already use, like WhatsApp.
Moving from idea to impact
Pitch Day is always a highlight, but it represents one moment in an always-on, year-round strategy to identify, test and accelerate new ideas that will help shape our future.
Several past Incubator ventures are now part of Adobe’s business, from Firefly Boards, a multiplayer canvas for creative ideation, to Brand Concierge, a conversational customer experience builder for enterprises, and Project Pulsar, a spatial photo and video editing application built in partnership with Google. Adobe Podcast's audio enhancement technology, called “Enhance Speech,” was named one of Time’s 100 best inventions of 2025 and is now available in Firefly, Premiere Pro and Express.
As this year's winners enter the Incubator over the coming weeks, they'll rapidly develop and scale their ideas into new products, testing and refining them early with customers along the way.
The Incubator is one pillar of a broader shift happening across Adobe, as AI reshapes how the company innovates. Submissions to Sneaks, our annual showcase of the latest breakthroughs from Adobe Research, more than tripled this year, and over 80 percent of Adobe's U.S. patent filings are now AI-related.
Together these signals represent our conviction that great ideas come from anywhere, and our commitment to shaping the future of creativity, productivity and customer experiences.
