World-leading visual communications company Canva is joining forces with a generative artificial intelligence start-up to put the latest tools in the hands of millions of would-be designers.

Australia’s largest privately held technology company announced plans on Tuesday to buy Leonardo.AI, whose technology has been used to produce more than one billion images since its launch 18 month ago.

Priding itself on democratising design by putting graphic design tools within reach of beginners and professionals, Canva said the acquisition was a “major milestone” in pushing the boundaries of design and visual AI.

Sydney-based Leonardo, initially targeting game creators, is one of Australia’s fastest-growing startups and has changed the way millions of people create content.

“The possibilities are endless … with Canva’s backing, we will be able to supercharge the Leonardo.Ai platform,” Leonardo chief executive JJ Fiasson said.

“We can invest more deeply in scaling our AI research efforts globally, and move even faster to deliver new features and functionality.”

The platform, set to be integrated into Canva’s existing suite of AI tools, can generate images in seconds with simple prompts, create videos, sketch with AI, and custom-train models with their own datasets.

Canva’s AI-driven toolkit, called Magic Studio, has been used more than seven billion times since it launched in 2023.

The acquisition of Leonardo and its team of 120 researchers, engineers, and designers is Canva’s eighth acquisition following Affinity (2024), Flourish (2022) and visual AI company Kaleido (2021).

Canva, founded by billionaires Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins, already has more than 190 million monthly active users and is widely expected to list on the Australian stock exchange as soon as 2025.

 

Marion Rae
(Australian Associated Press)