Canva acquires Cavalry and MangoAI to challenge Adobe with motion design and AI video tools

Canva Acquisitions Target Motion Design and AI Video Capabilities

Canva announced on Monday the acquisition of two startups—Cavalry and MangoAI—as the design software vendor expands its professional creative suite amid turbulence in software stocks 1

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. The deals, whose financial terms were not disclosed, mark Canva's fourth and fifth acquisitions in the past two years, following Affinity in 2024, Leonardo in 2024, and MagicBrief in 2025 3

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. These moves come as software stocks have been hammered in recent weeks, with investors worried about threats from artificial intelligence. Adobe, Canva's larger rival, has dropped 30% so far this year 1

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Cavalry, a UK-based four-person startup, sells subscriptions to motion and animation software for creating 2D animation used in advertising, marketing, gaming, and generative art 2

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. Cameron Adams, Canva's co-founder and product chief, told CNBC that customers have been asking what the company can offer in motion graphics. Cavalry has gained attention among designers on social media as an alternative to Adobe's After Effects for some work 1

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. Amazon, ByteDance, Google, and OpenAI all have employees that are paying customers, according to Cavalry's website 1

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Integration with Affinity Suite Expands Professional Toolset

Canva will continue to operate Cavalry for people to use and buy independently, while also incorporating the animation technology into the core Canva product and the Affinity application for professional designers 1

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. Canva acquired the professional creative editing suite Affinity in 2024, revamped its design last year, and made it free in October. Since this change, downloads of the software have exceeded five million 2

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. Affinity currently offers capabilities for photo, vector, and layout editing. The acquisition of Cavalry allows Canva to add motion editing to these existing features 2

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In a blog post, Canva described the integration as closing a gap in its product offering: "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" 2

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. Cliff Obrecht, co-founder and COO at Canva, stated: "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" 4

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MangoAI Brings AI-Powered Video Advertising Optimization

MangoAI is a stealth-mode startup whose technology can be used for creating short videos for advertising 1

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. The company focused on creating reinforcement learning systems to improve video ad performance through a closed-loop system that uses ad platform reward signals to refine video ads 2

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. Canva plans to incorporate MangoAI into Canva Grow, its advertisement generator available through its business tier at $250 per person per year 1

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The MangoAI technology is able to track video ad performance and make recommendations. "There's a whole bunch that goes into creating the right video," Adams said. That includes "being able to cut stuff down, being able to repurpose content from other campaigns and put it together, being able to take a great call to action that happens at the end of one video and then append it to the hook that happens in another video. Analyzing all of that across your campaigns is the full vision of Canva Grow, and Mango will help enable that" 1

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Key Talent Joins to Lead AI and Algorithm Development

MangoAI was founded by Nirmal Govind and Vinith Misra, both of whom have significant backgrounds in data science 2

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. Nirmal Govind served as Vice President of Data Science & Engineering at Netflix and will assume the role of Canva's first Chief Algorithms Officer. He brings more than two decades of experience in large-scale machine learning and AI systems, and will lead personalization, algorithmic systems, AI research, and in-house model development in collaboration with Canva's AI Lab 3

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. Vinith Misra, previously a machine learning scientist and leader at Roblox and Netflix, joins as Reinforcement Learning Lead within Canva's Research Lab 3

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Strong Revenue Growth Despite Market Pressures

Canva said it ended 2025 with over $4 billion in annualized revenue, up 36% from a year prior 1

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. The platform now hosts over 265 million users, including teams at over 95% of the Fortune 500. Among these, 31 million are paid subscribers 2

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. Its AI tools have been used more than 24 billion times, and in 2025 alone, the company added over 50 million users 3

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. Adobe reported $6.2 billion in revenue for the November quarter, up 10%. Adobe's market capitalization stood at $101 billion on Monday, while Canva said in August that it had been valued at $42 billion in a secondary share sale, before the recent plunge in software stocks 1

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Adams said Canva has seen instances of people directing generative AI models to create content such as slide presentations and social media posts. But AI can't do everything, he noted. "AI is great at getting you to 80%. That last 20% where you're confident that you can push this piece of content out and truly represent your brand and speak to your audience and achieve the goals that you want to achieve is vital to have, and that last 20% is really tricky to do" 1

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. Canva, which now has over 5,000 employees, is not currently raising a new funding round, Adams said 1

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Industry Perspective on the Acquisitions

For motion design professionals, the acquisitions signal a shift in creative workflows. Ben Drake, creative director and head of motion at Pennant Video, expressed optimism about the deal. "Adobe has been the unavoidable centre of the creative workflow for years. It's refreshing to see that start to change," he says. "Canva's clearly building out a full creative stack, and Cavalry adds something that's been missing in most accessible tools - actual motion systems" 4

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. Drake noted that "Cavalry feels like a tool that's built by people who actually understand motion design at a professional level. It's thoughtful and efficient" 4

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