Canva is making a bigger push to become an all-in-one creative and marketing platform. On Monday, the company behind the popular design suite announced it has acquired two startups: Cavalry, a UK-based 2D motion animation tool, and MangoAI, a company focused on improving video ad performance using advanced machine-learning techniques.
The Cavalry acquisition is a clear signal that Canva wants to expand beyond static design and into professional-grade motion. Cavalry specializes in 2D motion animation used across advertising, marketing, gaming, and generative art. Canva says Cavalry’s technology will strengthen Affinity, the professional creative editing suite Canva bought in 2024, which already covers photo editing, vector work, and layout design.
Canva has been investing heavily in Affinity’s momentum. After refreshing Affinity’s design and making it free for all users last year, Canva says the software has been downloaded more than five million times. Now the company wants to plug what it sees as a major gap in its pro toolkit: motion editing. By combining Affinity’s traditional creative capabilities with Cavalry’s animation tools, Canva is positioning its software as a broader “Creative OS” that can support end-to-end professional work while still offering the precision and control many designers expect.
The second acquisition, MangoAI, points to Canva’s expanding ambition on the marketing side—especially around performance-driven creative. MangoAI had been operating in stealth and, according to its website, was building reinforcement learning systems designed to improve video ad performance. Canva says MangoAI’s first product helped customers build and launch ads, then learn from real-world outcomes to improve future campaigns.
MangoAI was co-founded by Nirmal Govind, formerly Vice President of Data Science & Engineering at Netflix, and Vinith Misra, previously a data scientist at Netflix and Roblox. As part of the deal, Govind will become Canva’s first Chief Algorithms Officer, while Misra will focus on strengthening Canva’s marketing products.
These moves fit into a larger pattern. Canva has been steadily building out tools meant not just for designing assets, but for helping teams measure what works and scale campaigns. In January 2025, Canva acquired marketing intelligence startup Magicbrief. Later, Canva introduced Canva Grow, a product designed to support asset creation and performance measurement.
Canva’s leadership has also emphasized that growth and performance tools are gaining traction, particularly for creating static content and publishing to Meta platforms. While still early, Canva has indicated more capabilities are on the way, including expanded video creation features, broader multi-platform deployment, and more robust measurement—areas where MangoAI’s ad-optimization expertise could play a major role.
Together, the Cavalry and MangoAI acquisitions suggest Canva is building toward a future where creative production and marketing performance live under one roof: professional photo, vector, layout, and motion design on one side, and smarter ad creation, optimization, and analytics on the other.
Canva ended 2025 with $4 billion in annualized revenue, more than 265 million users, and 31 million paid users—scale that gives it a powerful runway to turn these acquisitions into mainstream tools for creators, agencies, and brands looking to produce more content, faster, and with clearer performance feedback.
