Canva’s double buy sparks AI design race

Canva announced the acquisition of MangoAI and Cavalry to strengthen its artificial intelligence capabilities and expand its professional creative software portfolio.

The global visual communication platform said the deals support its long-term product roadmap by integrating advanced AI technology and professional design tools into its unified ecosystem.

The purchases mark Canva’s fourth and fifth acquisitions in the past two years following the earlier additions of Affinity in 2024, Leonardo in 2024, and MagicBrief in 2025 as the company pushes to build a comprehensive suite of visual communication solutions.

The company said adding Cavalry and MangoAI will accelerate the development of technology and expertise aimed at expanding creative possibilities for teams, creators, and designers.

Canva reported that more than 265 million people now use the platform worldwide, including teams from more than 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies.

Its artificial intelligence tools have been used over 24 billion times while the platform added more than 50 million new users in 2025 as visual communication becomes more central to workplace collaboration.

The company also said it closed 2025 with more than $4 billion in annualized revenue, representing a 36 percent increase from the previous year, alongside more than 31 million paid seats and its ninth consecutive year of positive free cash flow.

Canva co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Cliff Obrecht said the company continues to focus on making creative tools widely accessible while expanding options for professional designers.

He said Affinity has already surpassed five million downloads within months of its launch, signaling strong demand for professional-grade design tools within the Canva ecosystem.

Obrecht said the addition of Cavalry will help integrate motion design with vector and layout capabilities to give designers a more complete creative environment.

Cavalry, a United Kingdom-based 2D animation platform widely used by motion designers, will enhance Canva’s professional creative suite.

The platform was designed by animators to streamline the production of motion graphics and animation through faster and more flexible workflows.

Canva said the technology will complement Affinity’s photo, vector, and layout editing tools to create a fully interoperable design ecosystem for creative professionals.

Cavalry co-founder Chris Hardcastle said the partnership creates an opportunity to expand motion design capabilities while making animation tools more accessible to a wider community of creators.

The animation platform is already used by companies including Amazon, Meta, Google, and Netflix for professional creative production.

Cavalry founders Chris Hardcastle, Ian Waters, and Adam Jenns will join Canva as part of the acquisition to help guide the development of the company’s professional design offerings.

The deal represents Canva’s seventh acquisition of a Europe-based company following earlier purchases of Affinity in 2024, Flourish in 2022, Kaleido in 2021, Smartmockups in 2021, Pexels in 2019, and Pixabay in 2019.

Separately, Canva also acquired MangoAI, a United States startup focused on artificial intelligence systems designed to optimize video advertising performance.

The company said MangoAI’s technology will help strengthen its AI-driven marketing and creative tools as demand grows for automated and data-informed content production.

MangoAI developed proprietary algorithms and reinforcement learning systems that analyze advertising platform signals to automatically refine video content for stronger performance.

Canva said the technology can improve advertising results while reducing the time and costs associated with testing and optimizing marketing content.

The acquisition builds on the AI-driven marketing capabilities introduced through the earlier purchase of MagicBrief and will enhance CanvaGrow, the company’s marketing intelligence platform.

MangoAI co-founder Nirmal Govind will join Canva as its first Chief Algorithms Officer, a newly created position that reflects the company’s growing investment in artificial intelligence research and product development.

Govind previously served as Vice President of Data Science and Engineering at Netflix and brings more than two decades of experience developing large-scale machine learning and AI systems.

He will lead personalization and algorithm development across Canva while working closely with the company’s AI Lab on future visual AI technologies.

MangoAI co-founder Vinith Misra, a former machine learning scientist and leader at Roblox and Netflix, will also join Canva as reinforcement learning lead within the company’s research laboratory.