The company continues to accelerate its pace of investment and development, and Canva AI products have now been used over 7 billion times.
Sydney, 30 July 2024–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Canva, the global leader in visual communications with over 190 million monthly active users, today announced plans to acquire Leonardo.AI. One of Australia's fastest growing startups and a leading generative AI content and research company, Leonardo.AI helps millions of people bring their ideas to life through production-quality images and videos. The acquisition complements Canva's services and strengthens the company's vision to build a world-class suite of visual AI tools, marking an important milestone in its AI journey.
As AI continues to shape the future of work and visual communication, this acquisition will enable Canva to accelerate its ongoing investment in research and development and bring Leonardo's cutting-edge foundational models to the global Canva community. From creating assets for marketing and advertising campaigns, to visualizing stunning interior concepts, enhancing mockups and producing dynamic videos, Leonardo's technology has been used to create over 1 billion images in the last 18 months.
For Leonardo.AI, this is an opportunity to create a new level of AI innovation while simultaneously scaling the organization. Canva's support will accelerate the company's current trajectory and further enable it to build a creative-centric generative AI platform on a global scale.
“We're thrilled to welcome Leonardo.AI to Canva, as two Australian companies join forces to deliver groundbreaking world firsts in AI and creativity,” said Cameron Adams, co-founder and chief product officer at Canva. “The space is constantly evolving, and Leonardo's technical leadership and impact on the community can't be overstated. Bringing both worlds together will accelerate the work of our teams and make us stronger than ever. We can't wait to get started.”
World-leading generative AI capabilities
Launched in late 2022, Leonardo's foundational models will empower millions of people to transform their ideas into production-quality visual assets with unprecedented control, speed, and stylistic consistency. Creators can generate images in any aesthetic within seconds with simple prompts, create videos, sketch with AI, and custom train models on their own datasets.
Leonardo's new base model, Phoenix, takes creative control to the next level with unprecedented fast compliance, consistent and accurate text within images, and the ability to generate production-ready assets in a single shot.
“Today marks the beginning of a new chapter that accelerates the pace of innovation at Leonardo.AI,” said JJ Fiasson, founder and CEO of Leonardo.AI. Joining the Canva family will enable us to invest even deeper in expanding our AI research efforts globally and bring new features and functionality to creators around the world more quickly.”
Just two years after launch, Leonardo.AI has garnered over 19 million registered users and is used across a variety of industries, including advertising, marketing, design, entertainment, architecture, fashion, e-commerce, education, and more. Our collaboration with Canva brings a new level of AI technology to not only invigorate but also expand Leonardo's fast-growing user base.
From hobbyists to filmmakers, architects and professional designers, Leonardo's technology offers advanced creative control that pushes the boundaries of what's possible with generative AI, while remaining intuitive and easy to use. The company's models can generate compelling imagery in a variety of styles, from stunningly realistic photographs to character portraits, anime and painterly styles, and its AI video generation tools can dynamically bring nearly any concept to life.
Rethinking visual communication
According to Canva's recent Visual Economy Report, the need for effective, efficient and compelling visual communication is growing dramatically. AI is now playing an increasingly important role in boosting both productivity and creativity in the workplace. From marketing teams instantly generating audience-specific advertising creative to scale global campaigns, to designers creating early drafts and storyboards, generative artificial intelligence is changing the way work gets done.
Leonardo’s world-class technology and foundational model further Canva’s mission to empower professionals of all kinds to instantly transform ideas into designs, enabling faster, more innovative, and more compelling visual communications.
Leonardo's technology complements Magic Studio, Canva's suite of AI tools that has been used more than 7 billion times since its launch in 2023. To date, Canva users have leveraged Magic Studio to elevate their design and creative outcomes for everything from summarizing documents to creating images and turning brainstorming whiteboards into professional presentations.
Accelerating Canva's AI journey
Canva will continue to invest in Leonardo's standalone platform as well as integrating the company's technology across its Magic Studio product suite. Working with Leonardo's team of 120 talented researchers, engineers and designers will also strengthen Canva's research and development capabilities and continue to invest in long-term innovation opportunities.
Over the past decade, acquisitions have played a key role in improving and accelerating Canva's technology, and the acquisition of Leonardo marks the company's eighth acquisition, following Affinity (2024), Flourish (2022), Kaleido (2021), Smartmockups (2021), Pexels (2019), Pixabay (2019) and Zeetings (2018).
For more details on the acquisition, see blog posts from Canva co-founder Cameron Adams and Leonardo.Ai CEO JJ Fiasson, respectively.
About Canva
Founded in 2013, Canva is a free online visual communication and collaboration platform with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design. With a simple drag-and-drop user interface and a wide range of templates ranging from presentations, documents, websites, social media graphics, posters, apparel to videos, as well as a vast library of fonts, stock photos, illustrations, video footage and audio clips, anyone can take their ideas and create something beautiful.
About Leonardo.Ai
Leonardo.Ai is one of Australia's fastest growing startups, democratizing creativity with its generative AI content creation platform. Since its founding in 2022, the company has reached over 19 million users worldwide and generated over 1 billion images. Leonardo.Ai is currently used by enthusiasts and professionals across creative industries, including advertising and marketing, design and architecture, film, fashion, photography, e-commerce, and education.
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contact address
Canva Press Contact
Lachlan Andrews: lachlan@canva.com (AU)
Olivia Johnson: oliviajohnson@canva.com (USA)
Leonardo.Ai Press Contact
Elizabeth Obee: elizabeth.obee@leonardo.ai
