Creative software giant Canva has announced the acquisition of two startups: Cavalry, a UK-based 2D motion animation platform, and the stealth AI marketing firm MangoAI. The move, confirmed on Monday, is designed to expand the capabilities of Canva's professional-grade Affinity suite and enhance its marketing solutions for businesses.
The company stated that integrating Cavalry's technology will introduce motion editing to Affinity, which currently handles photo, vector, and layout editing. Canva acquired Affinity in 2024 and made it free last year, resulting in over five million downloads. Separately, MangoAI's reinforcement learning systems are intended to improve video ad campaign performance.
Expanding the Professional Creative Suite
Canva's acquisition of Cavalry directly addresses a gap in its professional 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," the company stated in an official blog post. It emphasised that the tools would preserve the depth required by professional creatives.
Cavalry's technology serves sectors including advertising, marketing, gaming, and generative art. Its integration aims to transform Affinity into what Canva calls a "full-stack Creative OS for professional work."
Bolstering Marketing and AI Capabilities
The purchase of MangoAI continues Canva's push into the marketing intelligence space, following its acquisition of Magicbrief in January 2025. MangoAI was founded by Nirmal Govind, former Vice President of Data Science & Engineering at Netflix, and Vinith Misra, a former data scientist at Netflix and Roblox.
Canva confirmed that Govind will become the company's first Chief Algorithms Officer, while Misra will focus on enhancing Canva's marketing products. MangoAI's first product helped clients create, launch, and optimise ad campaigns based on performance data.
This strategy aligns with Canva Grow, a growth tool launched last year for asset creation and performance measurement. Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht told TechCrunch earlier this month that Canva Grow is performing "incredibly well," particularly for static content on Meta platforms, with plans to expand into video creation and multi-platform deployment.
Strategic Context and Company Performance
These acquisitions are part of Canva's broader strategy to solidify its position as an all-in-one marketing and design solution. The company is focusing on adding advanced video creation tools and more granular performance analytics to its offerings.
The moves come after a period of significant growth. Canva closed 2025 with $4 billion in annualised revenue, supported by more than 265 million total users and 31 million paid subscribers worldwide.