Mumbai: Canva, the global visual communication platform, has announced the acquisitions of MangoAI and Cavalry, strengthening its long-term AI and professional creative roadmap. The dual acquisitions mark Canva’s fourth and fifth strategic buys in the past two years, following Affinity (2024), Leonardo (2024) and MagicBrief (2025).
With more than 265 million users globally — including teams at over 95% of the Fortune 500 — Canva continues to expand its unified design ecosystem. The company revealed that its AI products have been used more than 24 billion times to date, while 2025 alone saw over 50 million new users join the platform. Canva also closed 2025 with over $4 billion in annualised revenue, up 36% year-over-year, alongside more than 31 million paid seats and strong free cash flow for the ninth consecutive year.
Commenting on the expansion, Cliff Obrecht, Co-founder and COO, Canva, said, “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.
“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.”
Cavalry: Strengthening Professional Motion Design
The acquisition of UK-based 2D animation platform Cavalry bolsters Canva’s push into professional-grade creative tools. Created by animators for animators, Cavalry is trusted by global brands including Amazon, Meta, Google and Netflix. The integration will complement Affinity’s tools for photo, vector and layout editing, creating a more comprehensive and interoperable professional suite.
“We built Cavalry to give motion designers a faster, more flexible creative playground suitable for the demands of modern production.
Canva’s platform and long-term vision make it a natural next chapter for our technology. Together, we have an incredible opportunity to redefine motion design, bringing smarter workflows that make animation more powerful, and far more accessible, to a new generation of creatives, said Chris Hardcastle, Co-Founder, Cavalry.
Cavalry founders Chris Hardcastle, Ian Waters and Adam Jenns will join Canva to help shape its professional creative offering. The acquisition marks Canva’s seventh Europe-based acquisition, following Affinity (2024), Flourish (2022), Kaleido (2021), Smartmockups (2021), Pexels (2019) and Pixabay (2019).
MangoAI: Advancing Data-Driven Creative Intelligence
Canva has also acquired US-based MangoAI, an early-stage startup specialising in AI-powered creative optimisation for video advertising. MangoAI has developed proprietary algorithms and a closed-loop reinforcement learning system that uses ad platform reward signals to automatically improve video ad performance, reducing both time and spend required to identify effective creative.
The acquisition builds on Canva’s earlier integration of MagicBrief and strengthens Canva Grow, the company’s marketing intelligence suite.
“Canva has built one of the world’s most impactful creative platforms. I’m excited to join the team and help shape how data, algorithms, and AI power personalised experiences across the product – supporting everyone from first-time creators to the most advanced teams,” said Nirmal Govind, Co-founder, MangoAI
As part of the acquisition, Nirmal Govind joins Canva as its first Chief Algorithms Officer — a newly created role reflecting the company’s expanding investment in AI research, personalisation and in-house model development. Formerly Vice President of Data Science & Engineering at Netflix, Govind brings over two decades of experience in large-scale machine learning systems. MangoAI co-founder Vinith Misra will also join Canva as Reinforcement Learning Lead within Canva’s Research Lab.
With these dual acquisitions, Canva continues its strategy of integrating advanced AI capabilities with professional creative tools, aiming to deliver a unified, intelligent platform that supports everyone from individual creators to enterprise teams.
