Canva, Inc. is an Australian multinational software company launched in 2013. The platform provides a graphic design platform to create visual content for presentations, websites, and other digital products. Its uses include templates for presentations, posters, and social media content, as well as photo and video editing functionality.
The platform uses a drag-and-drop interface designed for its users without professional design training or experience. Canva operates on a freemium model and has added features such as print services and video editing tools over time.
Contents
History
2013–2020
Canva was founded in Perth, Australia, by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams on 1 January 2013. One of the company's early investors was Susan Wu, an American entrepreneur. In its first year, Canva had more than 750,000 users. In 2017, the company reached profitability and had 294,000 paying customers.
In January 2018, Perkins announced that the company had raised A$40 million from Sequoia Capital, Blackbird Ventures, and Felicis Ventures, and the company was valued at A$1 billion. It raised A$70 million in May 2019, followed by A$85 million in October 2019 and the launch of Canva for Enterprise.
In December 2019, Canva announced Canva for Education, a free product for schools and other educational institutions intended to facilitate collaboration between students and teachers.
In June 2020, Canva announced a partnership with FedEx Office and with Office Depot the following month.
2021–2025
In September 2021, Canva raised US$200 million, with its value peaking that year at US$40 billion. By September 2022, the valuation of the company had levelled at US$26 billion.
While Canva's value declined from its 2021 peak by mid-2022, it remained one of Australia's most prominent technology companies, alongside Atlassian.
In 2023, the pair were named in the Australian Financial Review's AFR Rich List as among the 10 most wealthy people in Australia.
On 7 December 2022, Canva launched Magic Write, which is the platform's AI-powered copywriting assistant. On 22 March 2023, Canva announced its new Assistant tool, which makes recommendations on graphics and styles that match the user's existing design. On 11 January 2024, Canva launched its own GPT in OpenAI's GPT Store.
In May 2024, the company announced the launch of Canva Enterprise, a plan designed for large organisations, alongside new tools including Work Kits, Courses and AI capabilities. In 2024, it announced a co-funded solar energy project to enhance its sustainability efforts.
In February 2025, Canva reorganised its corporate group. A newly incorporated Delaware company, Canva, Inc., became the group's ultimate holding company. The former parent was subsequently registered in Australia as Canva Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, while the group's business operations were intended to continue in substantially the same manner.
On 10 April 2025, Canva released Visual Suite 2. The new interface combines Canva's design and productivity tools. New features include a spreadsheets application (Canva Sheets), a generative AI coding assistant (Canva Code), a chatbot, and an updated photo editor that can modify or remove background objects.
In August 2025, Canva launched a stock sale to employees, valuing the company at US$42 billion.
In October 2025, Canva introduced a design model capable of generating layouts with separately editable layers and objects. It also relaunched Affinity as a unified application combining vector, pixel and page-layout tools and made the base application free to use.
2026-present
In April 2026, Canva introduced Canva AI 2.0 in research preview, adding agentic tools that could schedule and perform recurring design tasks in the background. The company also added an offline mode that allowed selected designs to be edited without an internet connection and synchronised when connectivity returned.
In August 2026, Canva reduced its expected annual revenue-growth rate from 30% to 20%. The company said that unexpectedly high costs associated with serving its AI features had led it to slow their rollout while rebuilding the underlying architecture. Chief executive Melanie Perkins said that the cost per AI task had fallen by nearly 90% since Canva AI 2.0 was introduced in April.
Acquisitions
In 2018, the company acquired presentations startup Zeetings for an undisclosed amount, as part of its expansion into the presentations space.
In May 2019, the company announced the acquisitions of Pixabay and Pexels, two free stock photography sites based in Germany, which enabled Canva users to access their photos for designs.
In February 2021, Canva acquired Austrian startup Kaleido.ai and the Czech-based Smartmockups.
In 2022, Canva acquired Flourish, a London-based data visualization startup.
In March 2024, Canva acquired UK-based Serif, the developers of the Affinity suite of graphic design software, for approximately $380 million.
In August 2024, Canva acquired the AI image generation platform and startup, Leonardo AI, for an undisclosed amount.
In June 2025, it was announced that Canva had acquired Australian AI marketing startup MagicBrief for an undisclosed amount.
In February 2026, Canva acquired two startups: Cavalry, which specializes in animation software, and MangoAI, which aims to optimize advertising performance.
In April 2026, Canva acquired Simtheory, an AI Workflow Tool, and Ortto, a marketing automation tool.
Philanthropy
Canva's co-founders, Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, have publicly stated their intention to donate a significant portion of their personal wealth to charity.
In 2021, Canva started a partnership with GiveDirectly, a nonprofit organization operating in low income areas that makes unconditional cash transfers to families living in extreme poverty. Since then, the company has donated $50 million to support GiveDirectly's work across Malawi.
In 2025, Canva announced an additional $100 million commitment to expand its GiveDirectly partnership.
2019 data breach
In May 2019, Canva experienced a data breach in which the data of roughly 139 million users was exposed.
The exposed data included real names of users, usernames, email addresses, geographical information, and password hashes for some users.
In January 2020, approximately 4 million user passwords were decrypted and shared online. Canva responded by resetting the passwords of every user who had not changed their password since the initial breach.