Canva buys two AI startups, adds chief algorithms officer
Canva acquired two startups: MangoAI (US) and Cavalry (UK). Deals add marketing algorithms and professional animation tools to the platform.
MangoAI was 10 months old, still in stealth. Cofounders Nirmal Govind (ex-Netflix VP, Fable CTO) and Vinith Misra (ex-Roblox, Netflix ML scientist) built machine learning systems to optimise video ad performance. The tech will power Canva Grow's marketing intelligence suite, building on last year's MagicBrief acquisition.
Govind joins as chief algorithms officer. Misra becomes reinforcement learning lead at Canva's Research Lab.
Cavalry is a 2D animation platform used by motion designers at Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, Nike, and OpenAI. Cofounders Chris Hardcastle, Martin Vejdarski, Ian Waters, and Adam Jenns join Canva. The acquisition expands Canva's professional design suite, seventh Europe-based deal since 2019.
What this means for sales teams
Canva's B2B segment (teams over 25 seats) reached $500M ARR in 2024 through 100% growth. Overall ARR sits at $4B, up 36% year-on-year. The company is valued at $42B following an August 2025 employee stock sale.
Five acquisitions in two years: Affinity (2024, ~$380M), Leonardo AI (2024), MagicBrief (2025), now MangoAI and Cavalry. Pattern here is clear: buying talent and tech to move upmarket into enterprise and agency workflows.
No sales team size, headcount changes, or comp details disclosed. COO Cliff Obrecht appears to lead go-to-market, no dedicated CRO or VP Sales named publicly. For a company doing $4B ARR with aggressive B2B growth, that is an unusual structure.
Worth noting: Canva competes with Adobe in enterprise creative tools. These acquisitions push into motion design and AI-driven marketing, adjacent to core design platform. If you are selling enterprise creative software in ANZ, your patch just got more complicated.
The acquisition context
2024-2025 saw major AI sales tool acquisitions: Salesforce bought Zoomin and Airkit.ai, HubSpot acquired Clearbit for $150M+, Gong raised at $7.25B valuation. Canva's deals focus on creative and marketing AI, not traditional sales tech, but the pattern is the same: established platforms buying AI capabilities rather than building internally.
Affinity acquisition alone brought 4M+ downloads. MangoAI's real-time creative optimisation could change how marketing teams buy and deploy video ads. If that works, it changes what marketing ops and RevOps teams need from their stack.