Canva purchases startups specializing in animation and marketing technology
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Canva Strengthens Its Creative Suite with Dual Acquisitions
On Monday, Canva, the well-known maker of creative software, announced two significant acquisitions: Cavalry, a startup specializing in 2D motion animation, and Mango AI, a company focused on enhancing advertising performance.
Cavalry: Enhancing Motion Animation
Founded in the UK, Cavalry operates in various sectors, including advertising, marketing, gaming, and generative art, by offering advanced 2D motion animation tools. This acquisition aligns with Canva’s strategy to integrate Cavalry’s capabilities into Affinity, its professional editing suite for photos, vectors, and layouts that it acquired in 2024.
Canva has been working to enhance Affinity, updating its design last year and making it available for free. In just a year, Affinity has been downloaded over five million times, demonstrating its growing popularity. The integration of Cavalry’s animation tools is set to provide users with comprehensive capabilities that extend beyond traditional editing to include motion graphics.
Bridging the Motion Editing Gap
Canva emphasized the significance of this acquisition, stating, “By bringing Cavalry alongside Affinity, we’re closing that [motion editing] gap and unlocking a complete professional suite spanning photo, vector, layout, and now motion editing.” This expansion aims to develop a robust Creative Operating System (OS) for professional creatives, ensuring they have the tools necessary while maintaining the quality and control they expect.
Introducing Mango AI for Enhanced Advertising Solutions
Alongside Cavalry, Canva has also acquired Mango AI, a stealth startup focusing on reinforcement learning systems designed to enhance the performance of video ads. Mango AI’s initial product has been designed to assist clients in creating and launching ads while analyzing outcomes to refine future campaigns.
This acquisition is particularly noteworthy as Mango AI was co-founded by Nirmal Govind, a former Vice President of Data Science & Engineering at Netflix, and Vinith Misra, a former data scientist at Netflix and Roblox. With this acquisition, Canva plans to leverage Govind’s expertise by appointing him as its first Chief Algorithms Officer. Misra will focus on improving the company’s marketing product offerings.
A Strategic Move for Marketing Intelligence
Canva is not new to strategic acquisitions aimed at enhancing its marketing intelligence. Earlier in 2025, the company acquired Magicbrief, a marketing intelligence startup, which laid the groundwork for its recent launch of Canva Grow, a tool designed for asset creation and performance measurement.
Growing Success at Canva
During a recent discussion at the Web Summit Qatar, Canva’s co-founder and COO, Cliff Obrecht, shared insights on Canva Grow’s performance. He noted that the product is excelling, especially in generating static content for platforms like Meta. Obrecht described Canva Grow as an emerging product with a loyal user base and significant interest from larger brands.
“It is quite an early product, but we’ll soon be launching a lot more things around video creation, deploying across multi-platform,” he remarked, highlighting the company’s plans to expand its offerings.
Strengthening Canva’s Position in the Market
With these recent acquisitions, Canva aims to solidify its position in the marketing solutions landscape by integrating advanced video creation capabilities along with more precise performance measurement. As of the end of 2025, Canva reported a substantial annual revenue of $4 billion, supported by over 265 million users, including 31 million paid subscribers.
This latest move reflects Canva’s ongoing commitment to developing a comprehensive suite of tools for creative professionals, addressing a wide array of needs from graphic design to motion graphics, advertising, and performance analytics. As Canva continues to evolve, its strategic enhancements through innovations and acquisitions promises to deliver even more value to its users, establishing the platform as a leader in the creative software industry.
The Road Ahead for Canva
As Canva expands its portfolio with Cavalry and Mango AI, industry watchers and users alike are eager to see how these developments will enhance the capabilities of its creative suite. The integration of motion editing tools and advanced advertising technologies signals a new chapter for the platform, one that could redefine how professionals approach creative projects.
In conclusion, Canva’s recent acquisitions are not just about expanding their toolset; they represent a strategic vision of creating an all-encompassing ecosystem for professionals. By focusing on motion animation and advanced ad performance, Canva is poised to become an even more indispensable resource for creatives in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
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