Canva Doubles Down on AI and Motion Design with Dual Acquisition of Cavalry and MangoAI

In a bold move that signals its ambition to dominate the creative and marketing tech landscape, Canva has announced the acquisition of two innovative startups—Cavalry and MangoAI—in a strategic push to enhance its platform’s motion design and AI-powered marketing capabilities.

Cavalry: Breathing Life into Canva’s Creative Suite

First up is Cavalry, a UK-based startup specializing in 2D motion animation. Known for its intuitive tools used in advertising, marketing, gaming, and generative art, Cavalry brings a powerful motion design engine to Canva’s ecosystem. This acquisition directly complements Canva’s earlier purchase of Affinity, a professional creative suite for photo, vector, and layout editing, which the company acquired in 2024.

Canva has already revamped Affinity’s design and made it free for all users, leading to over five million downloads since the change. Now, with Cavalry in the fold, Canva is poised to close the gap in motion editing, transforming its suite into a full-stack creative operating system.

“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,” Canva stated in a blog post. “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 move positions Canva as a serious competitor to Adobe’s Creative Cloud, offering an all-in-one solution for static and animated content creation.

MangoAI: Supercharging Ad Performance with Reinforcement Learning

The second acquisition, MangoAI, is a stealth startup co-founded by Nirmal Govind and Vinith Misra, both former Netflix data science veterans. MangoAI specializes in reinforcement learning systems designed to optimize video ad performance. Their first product enabled clients to create, launch, and analyze ad campaigns, using real-world outcomes to refine future strategies.

With this acquisition, Govind will step into the newly created role of Chief Algorithms Officer at Canva, while Misra will focus on enhancing Canva’s marketing products. This move underscores Canva’s commitment to integrating advanced AI into its platform, particularly in the realm of performance marketing.

Building a Marketing Powerhouse

These acquisitions come on the heels of Canva’s purchase of Magicbrief, a marketing intelligence startup, and the launch of Canva Grow, a tool for asset creation and performance measurement. Together, these moves paint a clear picture: Canva is evolving from a design tool into a full-fledged marketing solution.

At Web Summit Qatar earlier this year, Canva’s co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht revealed that Canva Grow is already seeing strong adoption, particularly for creating static content for Meta platforms. “It is quite an early product, but we’ll soon be launching a lot more things around video creation, deploying across multi-platform,” Obrecht said. “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.”

The Bigger Picture: Canva’s $4 Billion Momentum

Canva’s aggressive expansion comes as the company closed 2025 with $4 billion in annualized revenue, over 265 million users, and 31 million paid subscribers. By integrating motion design and AI-driven marketing tools, Canva is not just enhancing its platform—it’s redefining what a creative suite can be.

With these acquisitions, Canva is doubling down on its mission to empower creators and marketers alike, offering a seamless blend of design, animation, and data-driven insights. As the creative industry continues to evolve, Canva’s bold moves ensure it remains at the forefront of innovation.

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