There are not many technology companies that can claim to have been founded in Australia, stayed in Australia, and grown into a global platform used by hundreds of millions of people. Canva is one of them — and in 2025 and 2026, it has added another chapter to its story by becoming one of the most ambitious AI-powered creative platforms on the planet.

This is the story of how a design tool built in Perth became a global technology powerhouse, and why its AI push matters for Australia and for anyone who creates visual content.

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Where Canva Came From

Canva was founded in 2012 by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams. Perkins and Obrecht were based in Perth, Western Australia, where Perkins had been running a school yearbook design business called Fusion Books while studying at the University of Western Australia. The insight behind Canva was straightforward: professional design tools like Adobe Photoshop and InDesign were powerful but difficult to learn, and most people who needed to create visual content — presentations, social media graphics, marketing materials — did not have the time or training to use them.

Canva's proposition was to make design accessible to everyone. A drag-and-drop interface, a library of templates, and a freemium pricing model that let anyone get started without paying anything. It was a simple idea, but executing it well took years of work and a great deal of persistence.

Perkins and Obrecht famously struggled to raise early funding. Perkins has spoken publicly about pitching to more than 100 investors before securing backing. The early fundraising journey included a trip to a Silicon Valley kite-surfing event to meet Bill Tai, a venture capitalist who became an early supporter and introduced the founders to other investors. The story has become part of Australian startup folklore — a reminder that some of the most successful companies are built through persistence rather than overnight success.

Canva launched publicly in 2013 and grew quickly. By 2019, it had reached a valuation of USD $3.2 billion, making it one of Australia's most valuable private technology companies. By 2021, following a funding round that valued the company at USD $40 billion, it had become one of the most valuable private technology companies in the world.

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The Scale of What Canva Has Built

As of 2024, Canva reported more than 170 million monthly active users across more than 190 countries. It offers an extensive library of templates spanning presentations, social media graphics, documents, videos, websites, and print materials, alongside hundreds of millions of photos, illustrations, icons, and other design elements.

The company operates on a freemium model: the core product is free, with a paid tier called Canva Pro (priced at approximately AUD $22.99 per month for individuals, or AUD $19.99 per person per month for teams, as of mid-2026) that unlocks additional features including a larger template library, background removal, brand kits, and premium content. There is also a Canva for Teams tier and an enterprise offering for large organisations.

Canva's revenue has grown substantially, though the company has not publicly disclosed precise figures. Reports from 2023 and 2024 indicated annual recurring revenue in the range of USD $1.7 billion to $2 billion, making it one of the largest software-as-a-service businesses to have originated in Australia.

The company employs several thousand people globally, with its headquarters remaining in Sydney (the team relocated from Perth to Sydney as it scaled). It has offices in Austin, Beijing, London, Manila, and São Paulo, among other locations. Despite its global footprint, Canva has maintained its Australian identity and its founding team remains in leadership roles — Melanie Perkins as CEO, Cliff Obrecht as COO, and Cameron Adams as Chief Product Officer.

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Canva's AI Transformation

The most significant development in Canva's recent history is its deep integration of artificial intelligence into its product. This transformation has been building for several years but accelerated dramatically in 2023 and 2024 with the launch of a suite of AI-powered features under the banner of Canva AI.

Magic Studio

In late 2023, Canva launched Magic Studio — a collection of AI tools integrated directly into the Canva editor. Magic Studio brought together several AI capabilities that had previously been separate features and made them accessible from a single panel within the design interface.

The core tools in Magic Studio include:

Magic Write — an AI text generation tool that can draft copy for presentations, social media posts, marketing materials, and other design elements. Users provide a brief description of what they want to say, and Magic Write generates text that can be edited and refined. The tool is powered by large language model technology and is designed to produce copy that fits naturally into design contexts.

Magic Design — a tool that generates complete design layouts from a text prompt or an uploaded image. A user can describe what they want — a presentation on sustainable agriculture, a social media post for a coffee shop, a flyer for a community event — and Magic Design produces a set of template options that match the description. This is a significant step beyond traditional template browsing, because it uses AI to match the content and context of the request rather than relying on the user to find the right template manually.

Magic Edit — an AI image editing tool that allows users to modify images by describing the change they want to make. A user can select a region of an image and type a description of what they want to add or change, and the AI generates a modified version. This brings generative image editing — previously available only in specialised tools like Adobe Firefly or Midjourney — directly into the Canva workflow.

Magic Eraser — a tool that removes unwanted elements from images using AI. Users paint over the area they want to remove, and the AI fills in the background. This is a capability that previously required Photoshop or a dedicated background removal tool.

Magic Expand — a tool that extends the edges of an image beyond its original boundaries using AI-generated content. This is useful for adapting images to different aspect ratios or adding context to a tightly cropped photo.

Magic Animate — a tool that automatically applies animations to design elements, creating animated presentations and social media content without requiring manual animation work.

AI-Powered Presentations

One of the most popular applications of Canva's AI features is in presentation creation. Canva's presentation tools have grown significantly, and the AI integration makes it possible to generate a complete, designed presentation from a text prompt in a matter of minutes.

A user can describe the topic and purpose of a presentation — a quarterly business review, a school project on climate change, a pitch deck for a new product — and Canva's AI will generate a multi-slide presentation with appropriate layouts, placeholder text, and design elements. The result is a starting point that can be edited and refined, rather than a finished product, but it dramatically reduces the time needed to create a professional-looking presentation from scratch.

This capability is particularly relevant for the millions of people who use Canva for business presentations, education, and marketing — contexts where the ability to produce polished visual content quickly has real practical value.

The Affinity Acquisition

In March 2024, Canva acquired Affinity, the UK-based developer of professional design software including Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher. The Affinity suite is widely used by professional designers as an alternative to Adobe's Creative Cloud, and the acquisition gave Canva access to a professional-grade design toolset alongside its existing consumer and business-focused platform.

The Affinity acquisition was significant for several reasons. It signalled Canva's ambition to serve professional designers, not just the broader market of non-designers who make up its core user base. It also gave Canva a set of tools with deep capabilities in areas like photo editing, vector illustration, and desktop publishing — capabilities that complement the AI-powered features Canva has been building.

Following the acquisition, Canva made the Affinity suite free for all users — a move that was welcomed by the design community and that significantly expanded the reach of the Affinity tools. The decision to remove the purchase price from software that had previously cost around USD $70 per application was a bold commercial move, and it reflected Canva's confidence in its ability to monetise through its broader platform rather than through individual software sales.

Canva's AI Infrastructure

Building AI features at the scale Canva operates requires significant investment in AI infrastructure. Canva has built its AI capabilities through a combination of in-house development and partnerships with leading AI providers.

The company has partnered with Stability AI, the developer of the Stable Diffusion image generation model, to power some of its image generation features. It has also developed proprietary AI models for specific tasks, including the layout and design generation capabilities in Magic Design.

In 2024, Canva integrated large language model technology — including capabilities from OpenAI — into its platform to power text generation and other AI features. This reflects the broader trend of software companies building on top of foundation models developed by AI research organisations, rather than training their own large language models from scratch.

Canva has also invested in AI safety and responsible AI practices. The company has published guidelines for the use of AI-generated content on its platform and has implemented safeguards to prevent the generation of harmful or misleading content. As a platform used by hundreds of millions of people, including many in educational contexts, Canva's approach to AI safety has implications well beyond its own product.

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What Canva Means for Australia

Canva's success is significant for Australia in ways that go beyond the company's own financial performance.

Proof of concept for Australian tech. Canva demonstrates that it is possible to build a globally significant technology company from Australia without relocating to Silicon Valley. This matters for the broader Australian technology ecosystem, because it shows that the talent, the capital, and the market access needed to build at scale are achievable from here. Canva's founders have been vocal about their commitment to Australia, and the company's continued presence in Sydney is a signal to other founders that staying is a viable choice.

Talent and investment. Canva's growth has created thousands of technology jobs in Australia and has attracted significant international investment into the Australian technology sector. The company's success has also raised the profile of Australian technology globally, making it easier for other Australian companies to attract international investors and partners.

Inspiration for the next generation. Melanie Perkins has become one of the most prominent technology entrepreneurs in Australia and one of the most visible female founders in the global technology industry. Her story — from a university student running a yearbook business in Perth to the CEO of a company valued at tens of billions of dollars — is a genuinely inspiring one, and it has had a measurable effect on the ambitions of young Australians interested in technology and entrepreneurship.

Economic contribution. Canva's Australian operations contribute directly to the economy through employment, tax revenue, and the spending of its employees. The company's global revenue also represents an export of Australian-developed intellectual property — one of the most valuable forms of export in a knowledge economy.

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The Road Ahead

Canva has been widely expected to pursue a public listing on the Australian Securities Exchange or a US exchange. The company has not announced a timeline for an IPO as of mid-2026, but the prospect of a Canva listing has been discussed in Australian financial media for several years. A successful listing would be one of the largest technology IPOs in Australian history and would create significant wealth for the company's founders, employees, and early investors.

In the meantime, Canva continues to invest in its AI capabilities, its product breadth, and its global user base. The company's strategy appears to be to make Canva the default creative platform for individuals, small businesses, and large organisations alike — a platform where AI assistance makes professional-quality design accessible to anyone, regardless of their design background.

The AI features Canva has launched in 2023, 2024, and 2025 represent a significant step toward that vision. Magic Studio, Magic Design, and the broader suite of AI tools have made Canva meaningfully more capable and have positioned it well in a market where AI-powered creative tools are becoming increasingly important.

For Australia, Canva's AI journey is a source of genuine pride. A company founded in Perth, built by Australians, and still headquartered in Sydney is now one of the most innovative AI-powered creative platforms in the world. That is a remarkable achievement — and the story is far from over.