Image: © EdNurg/Stock.adobe.com
Cameron Adams, co-founder of Canva, said that the two Australian companies are joining forces to bring ‘world-first breakthroughs’ in AI and creativity.
Canva, the popular visual design platform, has acquired Australian AI start-up Leonardo.AI as it continues to expand its offering.
Founded less than two years ago, Leonardo.AI has developed foundation models that aim to turn visual ideas into production-quality images and videos in any chosen aesthetic with simple text prompts.
The start-up’s latest foundational model, Phoenix, aims to help creators with improved prompt adherence, accurate text in images and the ability to generate production-ready assets in one go.
JJ Fiasson, founder and CEO of Leonardo.AI, said that the acquisition announced yesterday (29 July) “marks the start of a new chapter” for the start-up that will help it accelerate its pace of innovation.
“Joining the Canva family means we can invest more deeply in scaling our AI research efforts globally and move even faster to deliver new features and functionality to creatives worldwide,” Fiasson said.
With more than 190m monthly active users, Canva is one of the leading online tools for creating images and visual content for communications and marketing. By acquiring Leonardo.AI, Canva is set to benefit from research that can help it stay competitive in an increasingly saturated AI market.
Cameron Adams, co-founder and chief product officer at Canva, said that the companies are joining forces to bring “world-first breakthroughs in AI and creativity”.
“This field is constantly evolving, and Leonardo’s technical leadership and community impact can’t be overstated. Bringing our worlds together will accelerate each of our teams’ work, taking us from strength to strength, and we can’t wait to get started.”
Earlier this year, Canva – which was valued at $40bn in 2021 after raising $200m – boosted its services by acquiring Affinity. This deal set up Canva as a potential challenger to Adobe’s dominance in the design sector, by giving it access to software similar to Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
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