The global creative platform Canva has officially unveiled its strategic acquisition of two innovative startups, Cavalry and Mango AI, signaling a significant move to broaden its capabilities in both professional animation and AI-powered marketing optimization. This dual integration aims to solidify Canva’s position as a comprehensive creative operating system, extending its reach beyond user-friendly design into more specialized professional workflows and intelligent advertising solutions. The announcement, made on a recent Monday, underscores Canva’s relentless pursuit of market expansion and technological leadership in the fiercely competitive digital creative space.

Enhancing Professional Animation with Cavalry

Cavalry, a UK-based startup, specializes in sophisticated 2D motion animation, a crucial element across various digital verticals including advertising, marketing campaigns, gaming development, and generative art. Its tooling is designed to empower creators with precise control over dynamic visual elements, making it a valuable addition to any professional creative suite. For Canva, the integration of Cavalry is particularly significant as it directly enhances the existing capabilities of Affinity, Canva’s professional creative editing suite.

Canva acquired Affinity in 2024, a landmark move that immediately positioned the Australian-born company in direct competition with long-standing industry giants like Adobe. Affinity, known for its powerful desktop applications for photo editing, vector graphics, and layout design, has traditionally catered to a more professional user base seeking robust alternatives to subscription-based models. Following its acquisition, Canva strategically revamped Affinity’s design and made it freely accessible to all users in the previous year, a decision that led to over five million downloads of the software, demonstrating a strong demand for high-quality, accessible professional tools.

The addition of Cavalry now means Affinity users will gain access to advanced motion editing functionalities, closing a critical gap in its offering. As Canva articulated in a recent blog post, "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 is not merely about adding a feature; it is about realizing a broader vision. "Together, these tools form the foundation of a full-stack Creative OS for professional work, while preserving the depth and control professional creatives rely on," the company further elaborated. This statement highlights Canva’s ambition to provide an end-to-end solution that caters to both casual users and seasoned professionals, offering a seamless workflow from static imagery to dynamic visual storytelling.

The Growing Demand for Motion Graphics

The strategic imperative behind integrating motion editing capabilities cannot be overstated in today’s digital landscape. Motion graphics have become indispensable for effective communication across social media, digital advertising, web design, and interactive experiences. Animated content captures attention more effectively, conveys complex information succinctly, and enhances brand recall. From explainer videos and animated logos to dynamic ad banners and interactive infographics, the demand for compelling motion design continues to surge. Traditional animation software often comes with steep learning curves and high costs, creating a barrier for many creators. By integrating Cavalry’s advanced tooling into the Affinity suite, Canva aims to democratize access to professional-grade motion design, much as it has done for static graphic design. This move not only expands Affinity’s utility but also potentially disrupts the market by offering sophisticated tools within an increasingly integrated and accessible ecosystem.

Mango AI: Reinforcing Intelligent Marketing Campaigns

Beyond animation, Canva’s other significant acquisition is Mango AI, a stealth startup focused on leveraging reinforcement learning systems to optimize video ad performance. Mango AI’s primary offering helps clients create and launch advertising campaigns, subsequently observing and analyzing outcomes to inform and improve future iterations. This data-driven approach is critical in the fast-evolving world of digital marketing, where performance optimization can significantly impact return on investment.

The expertise behind Mango AI is notable. The startup was co-founded by Nirmal Govind, formerly Vice President of Data Science & Engineering at Netflix, and Vinith Misra, a former data scientist at both Netflix and Roblox. Their extensive backgrounds in data science and engineering from leading technology companies bring a wealth of experience in building scalable, intelligent systems. Govind will assume the newly created role of Canva’s first Chief Algorithms Officer, a position that underscores the company’s commitment to embedding advanced algorithmic intelligence across its product suite. Misra, meanwhile, will dedicate his expertise to enhancing Canva’s marketing products, focusing on the practical application of AI to improve campaign effectiveness.

The appointment of a Chief Algorithms Officer signifies a deeper organizational shift within Canva, indicating a move towards an algorithm-centric strategy that will likely permeate various aspects of its platform, from content recommendations to design automation and, crucially, marketing performance. This leadership role is designed to ensure that Canva remains at the forefront of AI innovation, integrating sophisticated machine learning models to provide more intelligent, personalized, and efficient tools for its vast user base.

Building a Comprehensive Marketing Ecosystem

The acquisition of Mango AI is not an isolated event but rather a continuation of Canva’s strategic investment in marketing intelligence and performance measurement. In January of the previous year (2025), Canva acquired Magicbrief, a marketing intelligence startup. Later in 2025, the company launched Canva Grow, a dedicated tool designed for asset creation and performance measurement specifically for marketing campaigns.

Canva Grow has already shown promising results, particularly in its ability to facilitate the creation of static content and its seamless publication to platforms like Meta. Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht recently affirmed the product’s success, stating during a sit-down at Web Summit Qatar earlier this month that Canva Grow is doing "incredibly well," especially for static content. He also hinted at future developments: "It is quite an early product, but we’ll soon be launching a lot more things around video creation, deploying across multi platform." Obrecht further noted the existence of a "very loyal small user base" that includes "a lot of big brands spending money," indicating the platform’s potential for massive scaling.

With the integration of Mango AI, Canva aims to significantly bolster its capabilities in video creation and granular performance measurement within Canva Grow. The reinforcement learning systems from Mango AI will likely provide the sophisticated analytics and optimization necessary to fulfill Obrecht’s vision of expanding into multi-platform video deployment. This creates a powerful synergy: users can design visually stunning static and dynamic content with Affinity and Cavalry, then leverage Canva Grow, enhanced by Mango AI’s intelligence, to optimize their campaigns for maximum impact across various digital channels. This holistic approach positions Canva as not just a design tool, but a comprehensive solution for digital marketing, from ideation and creation to deployment and performance analysis.

Market Impact and Competitive Landscape

Canva’s dual acquisitions mark a significant escalation in its competitive strategy, particularly against established players in the creative software market. For years, Adobe has dominated the professional creative space with its Creative Cloud suite, offering industry-standard tools for design, video, and web development. Canva, initially lauded for democratizing design for non-professionals, has steadily encroached upon Adobe’s territory, first with its user-friendly interface for everyday design tasks, and more recently with the strategic acquisition of Affinity.

The integration of Cavalry directly targets a segment where Adobe After Effects has been a stalwart, offering a powerful alternative for motion graphics. Simultaneously, Mango AI and Canva Grow challenge the fragmented landscape of marketing technology, aiming to provide an integrated solution that combines creative asset generation with AI-driven performance optimization, potentially streamlining workflows that typically require multiple disparate tools. This strategy is designed to attract not only individual creators and small businesses but also larger enterprises seeking efficient, scalable, and intelligent creative and marketing solutions.

The market for creative tools and marketing technology is dynamic, characterized by rapid innovation, especially with the advancements in artificial intelligence. Companies that can offer integrated, intuitive, and intelligent platforms are poised for substantial growth. Canva, with its recent moves, is clearly investing in these areas to maintain its impressive growth trajectory. The company closed 2025 with an annualized revenue of $4 billion, serving more than 265 million users, including 31 million paid subscribers. These figures underscore its substantial market presence and its capacity to make strategic investments that further expand its ecosystem.

Canva’s Ambitious Vision for the Future

These latest acquisitions reinforce Canva’s overarching ambition to evolve into a full-stack Creative OS and a leading marketing solution provider. By bringing together advanced animation capabilities, professional-grade design tools, and sophisticated AI-driven marketing intelligence, Canva is constructing an ecosystem that promises to empower a vast spectrum of users, from casual designers to professional creatives and marketing teams. The company’s strategic trajectory indicates a clear focus on offering integrated workflows that simplify complex creative and marketing tasks, ultimately democratizing access to powerful tools that were once the exclusive domain of specialized professionals. As the digital economy continues to prioritize visual content and data-driven marketing, Canva’s expanded arsenal positions it strongly to capture a larger share of the global creative and advertising markets, shaping the future of digital content creation and distribution.