Adobe announced its plans to acquire the collaborative video editing platform Frame.io for USD 1.28 billion. The two entities will continue to operate independently until the completion of the deal in November 2021. Following the acquisition, Frame.io co-founder and CEO Emery Wells, and co-founder John Traver will join Adobe.

Frame.io is a New York-based collaborative video editing platform that provides creative teams a centralized hub for all media assets with real-time approvals and feedback via comments and annotations. It also launched a new technology directed at film and tv production professionals allowing teams to upload proxy footage, which contain the same metadata and timecodes as the original, to the cloud instantly. This drastically improves the video editing process for teams and allows team members on and off the set to view footage immediately after it’s shot.

The platform has more than 1 million active users with 17,000 paying customers as of November 2019. The company has raised USD 90 million in funding to date with its most recent funding (USD 8 million) coming in June 2021.

Through the acquisition, Adobe bolsters its in-house offering (Adobe Creative Cloud, representing 60% of Adobe’s revenue in Q2 FY2021) by adding a cloud-native video editing platform to complement its video editing and production tools (Premiere Pro and After Effects). The combination is expected to streamline the review and approval process and make Adobe’s offering more conducive to collaboration.