Tech companies rarely embark on a parade of successful acquisitions as Canva, a global visual communication platform, has, over the past few years. The company has now added to that with the acquisitions of MangoAI and Cavalry, which will undoubtedly plug into what is already a comprehensive suite of tools underpinned by utilitarian artificial intelligence (AI). Cavalry is a UK-based 2D animation platform, while MangoAI is a US-based early-stage startup developing video-advertising optimisation tools.
“We’ve always believed creative tools should be accessible to everyone, and we’re seeing that reflected in how the design community is responding. Affinity has already surpassed four million downloads in just a few months. Now, with Cavalry joining Canva, we’re taking another big step toward helping professional designers break free from bloated and expensive tools, bringing everything from vector to motion design into one powerful creative suite,” said Cliff Obrecht, co-founder and chief operating officer, Canva.
“With the acquisition of MangoAI, we’re also doubling down on building powerful new products for marketing and creative teams. Building on MagicBrief, MangoAI’s algorithms and learning loops will power the next generation of our AI-driven marketing products, laying the foundations for a new era where performance data continuously improves and adapts creative in real time,” he added.
Canva has reported an active base of 265 million users, of which 31 million are paid users. It clocked $4 billion in annualised revenue, which is up 36% year-on-year. The release of Canva AI and the additions since then have strengthened Canva’s foundation as it competes with Adobe’s popular suite and Apple’s recently released Creator Studio.
Cavalry’s acquisition will bring tools to the Canva suite that will appeal to motion designers, further making the case for relevance in the professional-grade tool conversation. This is the second piece in that puzzle for Canva, following the Affinity acquisition in 2024. The success of Canva’s acquisitions can be gauged by the fact that the Affinity app has clocked 4 million downloads since its release in October last year.
That moment also marked the rollout of Canva’s Creative OS, laying the foundations for what co-founder and chief executive officer Melanie Perkins had then termed an “imagination era”.
Cavalry is already used by Amazon, Meta, Google, and Netflix. Its founders, Chris Hardcastle, Ian Waters, and Adam Jenns, will now join Canva. Incidentally, the acquisition of Cavalry marks Canva’s seventh Europe-based acquisition, joining Affinity (2024), Flourish (2022), Kaleido (2021), Smartmockups (2021), Pexels (2019) and Pixabay (2019).
Over the past couple of years, Canva has made a sustained push into the enterprise workflows, with tools specifically built for teams and workflows. MangoAI’s integration with Canva AI, powered by advanced data intelligence, should help brands create personalised, brand-focused assets for external communications. MangoAI uses proprietary models and a closed-loop reinforcement learning system to generate and launch effective video ads.
Canva said it uses an ad platform reward signals that improve content generation, with better performance and effectiveness while reducing the time it takes. Co-founder Vinith Misra will join Canva in the role of Reinforcement Learning Lead as part of the Research Lab.
Canva has, time and again, insisted that the layer of AI in Canva’s rapidly strengthening visual suite is meant to assist human creativity, and not replace it. In a conversation with HT earlier, Liam Fisher, who is head of Pro Design Marketing, emphasised that, “it’s about the craft, the creativity, a designer, and their unique attention to detail. What we want to make sure is we’re not taking anything away from that craft.”
