Canva acquires Cavalry and MangoAI to build a full AI-powered creative platform
What's the deal? Canva has acquired two startups — UK-based CavalryDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and stealth-mode MangoAIDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — in a double deal aimed at expanding its professional creative suite and AI capabilities. Financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisitions bring 2D motion animation and AI-powered video ad optimisation into Canva's growing ecosystem.
Cavalry's tools will complement Affinity, Canva's professional editing suite for photos, vectors, and layouts, completing what the company describes as a full creative stack. MangoAI, built by former Netflix data science leaders, uses reinforcement learning to improve video ad performance by learning from real-world results.
Why now? Canva closed 2025 at $4 billion in annualised revenue — up 36% year on year — and has over 265 million users. It is moving quickly to challenge AdobeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which has seen its shares fall 30% this year as investors grow uneasy about AI disruption to traditional software. With Affinity already free and downloaded over five million times since October, Canva is building an alternative creative platform for professional designers at pace.
MangoAI's co-founder Nirmal GovindDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, formerly vice-president of data science at Netflix, joins as Canva's first chief algorithms officer. His co-founder Vinith Misra joins as reinforcement learning lead, signalling that AI performance intelligence — not just generation — is becoming central to Canva's product strategy.
What could go wrong? Canva is integrating multiple acquisitions simultaneously: Affinity in 2024, MagicBriefDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → in January 2025, and now two more. Managing that complexity while maintaining product quality across a platform used by over 265 million people is a real operational challenge. Cavalry, a four-person team, also needs to scale its technology to fit a platform of that size without losing the precision that made it attractive to professional designers.
Adobe remains formidable despite its share price decline. It has deep roots in professional workflows and enterprise contracts that will not shift quickly.
The signal: Canva is making a clear bet that the future of creative software is a unified platform — one that covers everything from everyday design to professional animation to AI-driven advertising performance.
The MangoAI deal in particular points to a shift in how marketing tools are being built: not just creating content, but closing the loop between creation and outcomes. As AI makes content generation faster and cheaper, the competitive edge moves to intelligence — knowing what works, and why.
Sources:
TechCrunch
Canva
CNBC
A.M.
