PERTH: Canva, a world leader in visual communication with more than 190 million monthly active users, today announced plans to acquire Leonardo.AI.

“With Leonardo.Ai’s incredible foundational model, and team of 120 high-caliber researchers, engineers, and designers, this acquisition bolsters our ability to supercharge our growing suite of AI products while investing in continued research and innovation to unlock the future of visual AI,” a statement noted.

Much like Affinity, Leonardo.Ai will continue to develop its web platform for its millions of users – including its business customers – now accelerated with Canva’s financial resources, expertise, and licensed content from Canva Creators program.

“We’ve been investing in ways to enhance our artificial intelligence goals for a number of years, starting with the launch of our Background Remover tool in 2019, which later saw us welcome visual AI company Kaleido to Canva in 2021. Not long after, we introduced the first iteration of our Text to Image⁠(opens in a new tab or window) tool in 2022, followed by our full suite of AI-powered products, Magic Studio, in 2023.

Since Magic Studio launched, it has been used more than 7 billion times. We’ve seen a 40% increase in monthly users this year alone leveraging our AI tools for everything from summarizing documents to creating images and turning brainstorm whiteboards into fully-fledged presentations.

With the addition of Leonardo, we’ll continue on our mission to lead innovation in the ever-evolving design and visual AI ecosystem. In a short time, the Leonardo team already has an impressive track record of innovation and excellence when it comes to AI-generated photos, graphics, and videos. Today, more than 19 million people use their products just two years after launching.

As well as using this acquisition to supercharge Leonardo’s platform and user growth, we also plan to rapidly integrate Leonardo’s leading technology and their Phoenix foundational model into our existing suite of Magic Studio products, such as our AI image and video generator: Magic Media. Deeper investment into foundational model research and development will be pivotal to both Canva and Leonardo, and we’re enthusiastic to be also investing in supporting Leonardo’s B2B adoption.”