From left: MangoAI’s Nirmal Govind, Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht, and MangoAI’s Vinith Misra.
Kamba
Software stocks have fallen in recent weeks as investors worry about the threat of artificial intelligence. In the startup world, Canva is one of the most popular companies due to its popularity with designers, but its market shows vulnerabilities with larger rivals. adobe It has fallen 30% so far this year.
Design software vendors are ramping up acquisitions as Canva considers dramatic changes in the market. The company announced Monday that it has acquired two startups, Cavalry and MangoAI, to support its challenges. adobe.
Cavalry is a four-person startup that sells subscriptions to software that creates 2D animation. MangoAI is a stealth mode company whose technology can be used to create short videos for advertising. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Canva co-founder and product chief Cameron Adams told CNBC that customers are asking him what the company can offer with motion graphics. Cavalry, which Canva uses for its own projects, has gained attention among designers on social media as an alternative to Adobe’s After Effects for some tasks.
Canva will continue to operate Cavalry for people to use and purchase for personal use, while incorporating animation technology into Canva’s core products and Affinity applications for professional designers. Canva acquired Affinity in 2024 and made it free in October.
AmazonByteDance, googleAccording to Cavalry’s website, all OpenAI companies have employees who are paying customers.
Canva will incorporate MangoAI into its Canva Grow ad generator, which will be available through the business tier for $250 per person per year. MangoAI technology can track video performance and make recommendations.
“There’s a lot of work that goes into creating a good video,” says Adams. This includes “being able to reduce content, being able to reuse and put together content from other campaigns, and being able to run a great call to action that appears at the end of one video and add it to a hook that appears in another video,” he said.
“The whole vision of Canva Grow is to analyze all of this across campaigns, and Mango helps make that possible,” Adams added.
Canva announced that its annual revenue will exceed $4 billion at the end of 2025, an increase of 36% year-over-year. Adobe reported a 10% increase in revenue to $6.2 billion in the November quarter. Adobe’s market cap was $101 billion on Monday, but Canva announced in August that it was worth $42 billion from a secondary sale of its shares before the recent software stock selloff.
Adams said Canva has seen examples of people instructing generative AI models to create content such as slide presentations and social media posts. But AI can’t do everything, he says.
“AI is great at getting to 80%,” Adams said. “That last 20% of pushing this content out, authentically representing your brand, speaking to your audience, and having the confidence that you can achieve the goals you want to achieve is so important, and that last 20% is so hard to achieve.”
Canva, which currently has more than 5,000 employees, is not currently raising any new funding, Adams said.
“Our revenue continues to grow, our user base continues to grow, and the quality of our products continues to improve with the introduction of AI,” he said.
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