On Monday, Canva, the popular creative platform, revealed it has acquired two innovative startups: Cavalry, a UK-based company specializing in 2D motion animation, and Mango AI, which focuses on enhancing advertisement performance through advanced AI systems. This strategic move is set to enhance Canva’s offerings by integrating new technologies into its suite.
Cavalry is renowned for its work in various fields including advertising, marketing, gaming, and generative art, offering robust 2D animation solutions. Canva plans to integrate Cavalry's technology into its Affinity suite, which the company acquired in 2024. Affinity, known for its comprehensive photo, vector, and layout editing capabilities, was redesigned last year and has since been downloaded over five million times after becoming free for all users.
The acquisition of Cavalry will enable Canva to introduce motion editing features, bridging a significant gap in its creative suite. Canva stated in a blog post, "By integrating Cavalry with Affinity, we're enhancing our professional suite to include motion editing, forming a complete Creative OS for professionals that maintains the depth and control they require."
In addition to Cavalry, Canva has also acquired Mango AI, a stealth startup developing reinforcement learning systems aimed at boosting video ad performance. Founded by Nirmal Govind, formerly of Netflix, and Vinith Misra, who has experience with Netflix and Roblox, Mango AI's innovative product helps clients optimize ad creation and assess campaign outcomes to inform future efforts.
With this acquisition, Govind will assume the role of Canva's first "Chief Algorithms Officer," while Misra will focus on upgrading Canva's marketing products. This move follows Canva's acquisition of marketing intelligence startup Magicbrief in January 2025 and the launch of Canva Grow, a tool designed to aid in asset creation and performance assessment.
During a recent discussion at the Web Summit in Qatar, Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht highlighted the success of Canva Grow, particularly in creating static content for Meta platforms. "It's an early-stage product with a devoted user base, including some major brands investing heavily," Obrecht noted. "We're gearing up to expand video creation and multi-platform deployment soon."
These acquisitions underscore Canva's ambition to strengthen its standing as a comprehensive marketing solutions provider. The company ended 2025 with impressive figures, boasting $4 billion in annualized revenue, over 265 million users, and 31 million paying subscribers.