Canva Expands Creative Suite With Cavalry and MangoAI Buyouts
Canva is aggressively expanding its professional creative capabilities with the acquisition of two startups: the animation-focused firm Cavalry and the marketing intelligence startup MangoAI. The move aims to solidify the platform’s transition into a comprehensive “Creative OS” for professional users.
The acquisition of U.K.-based Cavalry is designed to integrate 2D motion animation tools directly into Affinity, the professional creative editing suite Canva acquired in 2024. Since Canva revamped the Affinity suite and transitioned it to a free model, the software has surpassed 5 million downloads, demonstrating significant user demand for advanced photo, vector, and layout editing tools.
Integrating Motion and Marketing Intelligence
The company stated that by merging Cavalry with Affinity, they are addressing a critical gap in motion editing. The goal is to provide a comprehensive professional suite that retains the depth and control required by creative experts.
Parallel to the animation focus, the acquisition of MangoAI signals a deeper push into data-driven marketing. MangoAI was developed by former Netflix executives Nirmal Govind and Vinith Misra, alongside experience at Roblox. As part of the transition:
- Nirmal Govind will join the executive team as Canva’s first “chief algorithms officer.”
- Vinith Misra will lead initiatives focused on enhancing Canva’s marketing product offerings.
Scaling the Creative Ecosystem
These acquisitions follow a broader trend of expansion for the platform. In January 2025, Canva acquired the marketing intelligence startup MagicBrief. This aligns with the growth of “Canva Grow,” a toolset aimed at asset creation and performance measurement.
Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht recently noted that while Canva Grow is in its early stages, it has seen strong adoption among larger brands. “We’ll soon be launching a lot more things around video creation, deploying across multi-platform,” Obrecht said during Web Summit Qatar.
The company enters this new phase of development with significant momentum, closing 2025 with $4 billion in annualized revenue, 265 million total users, and 31 million paid subscribers.