Canva Bolsters Creative and Marketing Suites with Dual Acquisition of Cavalry and Mango AI

Sydney, Australia – February 26, 2026 – Canva, the global visual communication platform, announced on Monday its strategic acquisition of two innovative startups: Cavalry, a UK-based company specializing in 2D motion animation, and Mango AI, a stealth startup focused on enhancing video ad performance through reinforcement learning systems. These dual acquisitions signify a major step in Canva’s ambition to expand its professional creative toolkit and solidify its position as a comprehensive marketing solution for businesses of all sizes.

The acquisition of Cavalry directly addresses a critical gap in professional creative workflows by integrating advanced motion editing capabilities into Canva’s growing ecosystem. Cavalry, based in the United Kingdom, has carved a niche in providing sophisticated 2D motion animation tools across diverse sectors, including advertising, marketing, gaming, and the burgeoning field of generative art. Its technology enables designers to create dynamic and engaging animated content, a capability increasingly vital in today’s visually-driven digital landscape. Motion graphics are no longer just a luxury but a necessity for capturing audience attention across social media, digital campaigns, and interactive experiences.

Canva’s strategy involves integrating Cavalry’s robust tooling into Affinity, its professional creative editing suite. Affinity, which Canva acquired in March 2024, is renowned for its powerful capabilities in photo, vector, and layout editing, directly challenging established industry incumbents. Following its acquisition, Canva significantly revamped Affinity’s design in 2025 and made it freely accessible to all users, a move that quickly garnered immense traction, with over five million downloads recorded since. This accessibility, combined with Affinity’s professional-grade features, underscores Canva’s commitment to democratizing advanced design tools.

By bringing Cavalry into the fold alongside Affinity, Canva aims to create an unparalleled professional suite. As the company 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 integration promises to empower professional creatives with a full spectrum of tools, enabling them to move seamlessly from static design to dynamic animation within a unified environment. The company further emphasized its overarching 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." This "Creative OS" concept positions Canva as a holistic platform capable of handling every stage of the creative process, from initial concept to final output across various media. The addition of motion editing is particularly timely, given the explosive growth of video content and animated graphics across digital platforms. This move not only enhances Canva’s offerings for professional designers but also strengthens its competitive stance against industry giants in the creative software space. The embedded YouTube video "Cavalry joins Canva" further illustrates the capabilities and excitement surrounding this integration.

Beyond creative tooling, Canva is also significantly enhancing its marketing intelligence and performance optimization capabilities with the acquisition of Mango AI. Mango AI, a formerly stealth startup, specializes in building sophisticated reinforcement learning systems designed to dramatically improve the performance of video advertisements. According to its website, Mango AI’s initial product provided clients with a streamlined solution for creating and launching ads, followed by a robust system to observe outcomes and iteratively refine future campaigns for optimal impact. This data-driven approach to advertising promises to deliver tangible returns on investment for marketers.

The leadership behind Mango AI brings formidable expertise to Canva. The startup was co-founded by Nirmal Govind, who previously served as Vice President of Data Science & Engineering at Netflix, and Vinith Misra, a seasoned data scientist with prior experience at Netflix and Roblox. Their combined experience in leveraging data and artificial intelligence to drive user engagement and optimize performance in high-stakes environments is invaluable. Following the acquisition, Nirmal Govind will assume the pivotal role of Canva’s first "Chief Algorithms Officer," signaling a profound commitment by Canva to embed advanced algorithmic intelligence across its platform. Vinith Misra will dedicate his expertise to enhancing Canva’s suite of marketing products, ensuring that the platform’s tools are not only aesthetically powerful but also strategically effective.

These acquisitions are part of a broader, aggressive expansion strategy by Canva into the professional and marketing technology sectors. In January 2025, Canva acquired Magicbrief, a marketing intelligence startup, further solidifying its intent to offer comprehensive solutions beyond mere design. Later last year, the company launched Canva Grow, a dedicated growth tool aimed at streamlining asset creation and performance measurement for businesses. These earlier moves, combined with the latest acquisitions, illustrate a clear strategic trajectory towards becoming an all-encompassing platform for content creation, marketing execution, and performance analysis.

During a sit-down interview at Web Summit Qatar earlier this month, Cliff Obrecht, Canva’s co-founder and COO, provided insights into the company’s progress and future plans. Obrecht reported that Canva Grow was performing "incredibly well," particularly in facilitating the creation of static content and its publication across Meta platforms. He hinted at significant upcoming developments, stating, "It is quite an early product, but we’ll soon be launching a lot more things around video creation, deploying across multi-platform." Obrecht added, "So it’s very early, but it’s very much got a very loyal small user base, but a lot of big brands are spending money, and then we’re scaling up massively." This statement underscores the strategic importance of Mango AI’s video ad optimization capabilities and Cavalry’s motion editing tools, as they directly address the anticipated expansion into advanced video creation and multi-platform deployment for Canva Grow.

The synergy between Cavalry, Mango AI, and Canva’s existing offerings is clear. Cavalry enhances the creative output, particularly in dynamic content, while Mango AI optimizes the distribution and performance of that content, especially video ads. This combination positions Canva as a powerful, integrated solution for businesses looking to elevate their visual communication and marketing effectiveness. The company’s commitment to these areas is further evidenced by its impressive financial performance, closing 2025 with $4 billion in annualized revenue. Canva’s user base has also seen substantial growth, boasting over 265 million users, with 31 million of those being paid subscribers. This robust financial health and expansive user base provide the necessary foundation for Canva to continue making strategic investments that will drive its evolution from a beloved design tool to a dominant force in the professional creative and marketing technology landscape. The image featuring Mango AI Co-Founders Nirmal Govind and Vinith Misra alongside Canva Co-Founder and COO, Cliff Obrecht, symbolizes the strategic importance of these new partnerships and the future direction of the company.