Adobe Acquires Frame.io in Billion-Dollar Deal
In six short years, Frame.io has garnered millions of users around the world with its cloud-based video collaboration service. Now, Adobe has acquired it in a giant deal worth $1.275 billion.
In a blog post today, the CEO of Frame.io Emery Wells announced their intention to join the Adobe family.
If you're not already familiar, Frame.io is a very popular cloud-based video collaboration service, allowing very fast feedback and versioning on various projects. The service, which was backed by venture capital within its first year, has grown extremely fast, and has even caused similar companies (Dropbox, for example) to adopt a lot of the functionality that they brought to the table in order to compete. If you have spent much time behind a computer working on video in the last six years, chances are you've used the service.
In the blog post, Wells wrote, "Frame.io enables every stakeholder, no matter where they are, to participate in the creative process with the appropriate controls, feedback tools, and privacy settings in place. And we’re just getting started. Our vision for the future of video is stronger than ever."
Adobe's Role in the Whole Thing
When thinking about why Frame.io would sell to Adobe specifically (I mean, besides a billion dollars), there are definitely a ton of synergistic elements to the purchase.
"Our joint mission with Adobe will be to continue building Frame.io with expanded resources, while continuing to support a broad ecosystem of workflows," Wells wrote. "Over time, you can expect to see Frame.io more deeply woven into Adobe’s creative apps with a focus on making Premiere Pro the world’s most collaborative video editing platform. With our two companies joined together, the opportunities are limitless."
Adobe has made a lot of cloud-based and artificial intelligence-based updates to its offerings, with the addition of speech-to-text and AI-based transcription. These tools in conjunction with the Frame.io tools (potentially and probably all built directly into the software at some point in the near future) could prove extremely useful for all video creators and stakeholders.
The Future
Wells assures users that the acquisition should only be additive to the service's existing capabilities.
"We will also continue our commitment to invest in other partner integrations including Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and AVID Media Composer," Wells wrote.
The previous statement was an answer to my initial thought when I heard the news. I wondered if this meant that Frame.io would be an exclusive workflow and tool-set for only Adobe users, though it appears that's not the intention.
All I know is this is all a significant statement about the future and growth of video as a profession, and how much money there is in the industry right now, for a company to grow to a $1.275 billion dollar valuation in just six years.
