By Titik Puspa 
Boston, MA | June 9, 2026 – In a strategic move to significantly expand its professional creative capabilities and bolster its marketing solutions, design behemoth Canva announced on Monday the dual acquisition of two promising startups: UK-based Cavalry, a leader in 2D motion animation, and Mango AI, an innovative company focused on enhancing advertising performance through artificial intelligence. This double acquisition underscores Canva’s relentless pursuit of becoming a comprehensive, end-to-end creative operating system, catering to both amateur creators and seasoned professionals.
The acquisition of Cavalry is poised to directly address a long-standing gap in Canva’s professional creative suite, particularly following its landmark acquisition of Affinity in early 2024. Cavalry specializes in sophisticated 2D motion animation workflows, serving diverse sectors including advertising, marketing, gaming, and the burgeoning field of generative art. The integration of Cavalry’s advanced tooling is expected to seamlessly enhance Affinity’s existing robust capabilities in photo, vector, and layout editing, creating a truly unified professional creative environment.
Canva’s strategic integration of Affinity, a professional-grade creative editing suite for photos, vectors, and layouts, marked a significant step towards competing with established industry giants. The company made a bold move last year by revamping Affinity’s design and making it accessible to all users, a decision that has been met with immense success. Since becoming freely available, Affinity has seen over five million downloads, highlighting a strong demand for professional-grade tools among a broader audience. The addition of Cavalry’s motion editing prowess will now enable Canva to offer a complete professional suite that encompasses not only static design elements but also dynamic motion graphics, a critical component for modern digital content creation.
"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," the company articulated in a blog post announcing the acquisitions. "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 statement clearly signals Canva’s ambition to empower creative professionals with unparalleled control and comprehensive functionality within a single, integrated platform. The concept of a "Creative OS" suggests a move beyond individual applications towards a more holistic and interconnected ecosystem for creative production, mirroring the evolution seen in other operating systems.
The strategic rationale behind integrating motion editing into Canva’s professional offerings is multifaceted. In today’s digital landscape, animated content is no longer a niche requirement but a mainstream necessity for engagement across social media, websites, and marketing campaigns. By incorporating Cavalry’s expertise, Canva aims to equip its professional users with the tools to produce high-quality animated explainer videos, dynamic social media graphics, engaging advertisements, and even elements for interactive experiences. This move directly challenges the dominance of specialized animation software and aims to streamline workflows for creatives who currently juggle multiple tools.
Simultaneously, Canva has also brought aboard Mango AI, a stealth startup that has been diligently developing reinforcement learning systems specifically designed to optimize video advertising performance. According to information available on Mango AI’s website, the startup’s core innovation lies in its ability to help clients not only create and launch advertisements but also to meticulously analyze their outcomes. This data-driven approach allows for continuous improvement and refinement of future campaigns, leading to enhanced return on investment (ROI) for advertisers.
The caliber of talent behind Mango AI further amplifies the significance of this acquisition. The startup was founded by Nirmal Govind, who previously served as the Vice President of Data Science & Engineering at Netflix, and Vinith Misra, a distinguished former data scientist from both Netflix and Roblox. Their deep expertise in data science, machine learning, and large-scale platform optimization is expected to be a tremendous asset to Canva. Following the acquisition, Govind will assume the newly created role of Canva’s Chief Algorithms Officer, a testament to the company’s growing emphasis on AI-driven innovation. Misra will focus on enhancing Canva’s marketing products, leveraging his experience to refine user acquisition, engagement, and retention strategies through data-informed product development.
This acquisition of Mango AI aligns perfectly with Canva’s broader strategy to solidify its position as a leading marketing solution provider. The company has been actively investing in tools that empower businesses to not only design marketing collateral but also to measure and improve the effectiveness of their campaigns. This includes the acquisition of Magicbrief in January 2025, a marketing intelligence startup that helps users generate content briefs and refine messaging. Furthermore, Canva launched Canva Grow last year, a comprehensive growth tool designed for both asset creation and performance measurement, indicating a clear trajectory towards offering a more integrated marketing technology stack.
The integration of Mango AI’s capabilities into Canva’s platform could manifest in several ways. Advertisers using Canva might soon benefit from AI-powered suggestions for optimizing ad creative, targeting audiences more effectively, and predicting campaign performance. The reinforcement learning models could learn from campaign data to automatically adjust ad parameters, such as bidding strategies, creative variations, or audience segmentation, to maximize engagement and conversion rates. This would democratize advanced ad optimization techniques, making them accessible to small and medium-sized businesses that may not have the resources for dedicated data science teams.
Canva Co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht recently provided insights into the company’s ongoing development in the marketing space during a discussion at Web Summit Qatar. He expressed optimism about the performance of Canva Grow, particularly its effectiveness in creating static content and publishing it across Meta platforms. Obrecht also hinted at significant upcoming enhancements to Canva Grow, with a strong focus on video creation and multi-platform deployment. "It is quite an early product, but we’ll soon be launching a lot more things around video creation, deploying across multi-platform," Obrecht stated. He further elaborated on the tool’s traction, noting its growing user base, including significant engagement from large brands, and plans for substantial scaling.
With these latest strategic acquisitions, Canva is clearly aiming to move beyond its reputation as a user-friendly design tool and establish itself as a formidable force in the marketing technology landscape. The addition of Cavalry’s animation expertise will empower users to create more dynamic and engaging video content, a critical element for modern marketing. Coupled with Mango AI’s sophisticated ad performance optimization capabilities, Canva is positioning itself to offer a holistic solution that addresses the entire marketing lifecycle, from creative ideation and asset production to campaign deployment and performance analysis.
The company’s financial performance further validates its ambitious growth trajectory. Canva closed 2025 with an impressive $4 billion in annualized revenue, serving a vast user base of over 265 million individuals, with a significant portion of 31 million being paid subscribers. This robust financial standing provides Canva with the necessary capital and confidence to pursue aggressive expansion strategies, including significant acquisitions like Cavalry and Mango AI. The company’s consistent revenue growth, coupled with its expanding user base and strategic investments in AI and professional creative tools, suggests a continued upward trajectory in the competitive tech market.
The influx of talent from Mango AI, particularly Govind and Misra, is a clear indicator of Canva’s commitment to integrating cutting-edge AI into its product offerings. Govind’s leadership as Chief Algorithms Officer will be instrumental in driving Canva’s AI strategy across all its products, ensuring that the platform remains at the forefront of technological innovation. Misra’s focus on marketing products will likely lead to the development of more sophisticated analytics, personalized recommendations, and automated optimization features that will benefit Canva’s growing business clientele.
The YouTube embed of "Cavalry joins Canva" offers a visual preview of the animation capabilities that will soon be integrated into the Canva ecosystem. This demonstrates Canva’s commitment to showcasing the practical applications of its new acquisitions and providing its users with early glimpses of the enhanced functionalities. The accompanying image, featuring MangoAI Co-Founders Nirmal Govind and Vinith Misra alongside Canva Co-Founder and COO Cliff Obrecht, symbolizes the collaborative spirit and the shared vision for the future of creative technology that underpins these strategic partnerships.
In conclusion, Canva’s dual acquisition of Cavalry and Mango AI represents a pivotal moment in its evolution. By integrating advanced animation tools and sophisticated AI-driven ad performance optimization, Canva is not only expanding its professional creative suite but also significantly strengthening its position as a comprehensive marketing solutions provider. These strategic moves signal Canva’s intent to empower a wider range of users, from individual creators to large enterprises, with the tools they need to design, create, and effectively market their ideas in the increasingly complex digital world. The company’s ongoing investment in talent and technology, combined with its strong financial performance, suggests a future where Canva continues to redefine the boundaries of creative and marketing technology.