Canva announced the acquisition of UK-based animation startup Cavalry and stealth ad-tech company Mango AI, signaling a push to deepen its creative and marketing ecosystem.
Cavalry specializes in 2D motion animation across advertising, marketing, gaming, and generative art. Canva plans to integrate Cavalry’s capabilities into Affinity, its professional design suite acquired in 2024. Affinity, which supports photo, vector, and layout editing, has been downloaded more than five million times since Canva made it free. With Cavalry, Canva aims to close the motion-editing gap and offer a full-stack creative suite spanning static and animated content.
Canva also acquired Mango AI, a startup building reinforcement learning systems to improve video ad performance. Founded by former Netflix executives Nirmal Govind and Vinith Misra, Mango AI developed tools to help brands launch ads, analyze performance, and optimize campaigns. Govind will join Canva as its first Chief Algorithms Officer, while Misra will work on enhancing Canva’s marketing products.
The acquisitions build on Canva’s broader marketing push, including its January 2025 purchase of Magicbrief and the launch of Canva Grow, a tool focused on asset creation and performance measurement. With $4 billion in annualized revenue, 265 million users, and 31 million paid subscribers, Canva is positioning itself as both a creative platform and an AI-driven marketing solution.
