Adobe acquired Rilo, a Bengaluru-based startup that built AI tools for marketing and sales teams, in a deal that combined a licence to Rilo's technology with the hiring of its team. TechCrunch reported the deal on September 2, 2026, and Adobe confirmed it. The companies did not disclose terms.
According to TechCrunch, Adobe will integrate some of Rilo's intellectual property and take on its six-member team. Rilo will shut down and its product will no longer be available to customers. A source told TechCrunch that Rilo's investors will get an exit from the deal.
Rilo is Adobe's second acquisition of an Indian startup, after it bought the AI video company Rephrase.ai in 2023. Beyond confirming the deal, Adobe declined to comment.
What Rilo built
Rilo let go-to-market teams set up custom AI workflows for marketing and sales. Its uses included competitor intelligence, repurposing and distributing content, and analysing sales calls, TechCrunch reported. Teams could also build their own workflows, in a way TechCrunch compared with tools such as Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work. CXO Digital Pulse described a product in which non-technical users wrote out a business process in plain English and AI agents built and ran it across several software tools, with uses that also covered prospecting, campaign research, LinkedIn outreach and tracking brand visibility on AI discovery platforms.
Co-founder Dhruv Jaglan wrote on LinkedIn that more than 10,000 people had tried the tool. Co-founder Georgi Boby wrote that the company's mission had been to bring the power of AI to people beyond engineers, and that the team was joining Adobe to continue that mission at a larger scale, Entrepreneur India reported.
“We're very excited that Rilo has been acquired by Adobe in such a short span of time. Their workflow builder product was way ahead of the curve and shall be extremely valuable to a giant like Adobe in enhancing customer experience and productivity.”
The founders and the funding
Boby and Jaglan, who were batchmates at IIT Bombay, founded Rilo in September 2025, according to CXO Digital Pulse. Jaglan had previously co-founded Babblebots.ai, an AI recruitment company, and Boby had been technology lead at CloudChef, a cooking-robotics startup. The company raised $1 million from investors including Peak XV Partners, DeVC and Day Zero Ventures at a $10 million valuation, according to TechCrunch and Entrepreneur India. Neither report gave a date for the round.
The deal comes about a year after the company was founded. Rahul Gupta, managing partner at Day Zero Ventures, told TechCrunch his firm was pleased that Rilo had been bought by Adobe so quickly, and said its workflow builder had been ahead of the curve.
Rahul Mathur of DeVC told TechCrunch that Rilo's technology could fit into Adobe's customer experience and marketing suite, handling complex workflows and giving customers visibility into the actions they take on Adobe's platform.
Why Adobe is buying
The deal gives Adobe a small team and technology focused on automating marketing work. TechCrunch noted that companies are using AI to automate how campaigns are created, launched and tracked, to turn meetings and calls into tasks, and to improve brand visibility in chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. It said Rilo's technology could strengthen Adobe's products as the company targets larger customers.
Entrepreneur India said Rilo's technology is expected to complement Adobe's existing marketing and customer experience products.
The structure, a technology licence plus hiring the team instead of buying and running the product, means Rilo's existing users lose access to the tool. Adobe has not said which features will appear in its own products or when.
A crowded market for AI marketing tools
Adobe made a much larger marketing deal last year, when it agreed to buy the search optimisation company Semrush for $1.9 billion. Rival Canva has also added to its marketing products through acquisitions, TechCrunch noted, while Amazon, Google and Meta have built their own AI-powered marketing tools.
For a startup of Rilo's size, the outcome is a fast exit for its backers. Peak XV, DeVC and Day Zero Ventures put money in at a $10 million valuation; the price Adobe paid was not disclosed.
