Canva Revolutionized Graphic Design. Will It Survive the Age of AI?

image via WIRED

December 6, 2024, 2:00 AM

• •Canva cofounder and CEO Melanie Perkins says she never saw AI as an existential threat and is excited to embrace it.
• •The company has acquired text-to-image generator Leonardo.ai and launched its Magic Studio suite of AI design tools.
• •Perkins says Canva is leaning into the enterprise market and has seen widespread use across everything from software teams creating technical diagrams to HR teams doing onboarding.

Canva is a design platform that has grown to 220 million monthly active users and an 11-figure valuation. Cofounder and CEO Melanie Perkins says she never saw AI as an existential threat and is excited to embrace it. The company is now going after larger corporate clients, acquiring business-focused design platform Affinity in March and courting CIOs with a rap battle that went viral for its extreme levels of cringe. Alongside lofty growth ambitions, Perkins and her cofounder (and husband) Cliff Obrecht have committed to putting most of their equity—totalling 30 percent—into giving back.

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