Canva’s value soars by almost $10bn after secondary share sales

Canva is now valued at $US32bn after an ‘extraordinary’ year and several secondary share sales, adding an extra $2.5bn to the wealth of two of its co-founders.

Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht says demand for Canva shares continues to surge but he isn’t rushing to float the company.

Two of Canva’s co-founders, Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, have added about $2.5bn to their combined wealth after the value of the visual communications company soared by almost $10bn following several secondary share sales.

The couple, who founded Canva with Cameron Adams 11 years ago, had an estimated wealth of $10.92bn, according to the 2024 edition of The List – Australia’s Richest 250.

But following a “number of investor transactions”, Canva’s valuation has soared 23 per cent to $US32bn ($48.7bn), lifting Ms Perkins’ and Mr Obrecht’s combined wealth to $13.42bn.

Mr Obrecht said on Thursday it had been an “extraordinary year”. The company had an oversubscribed share sale earlier in April, which made some staff instant millionaires, while its annualised revenue leapt 13.6 per cent to $2.5bn.

Canva has also topped more than 200 million monthly active users and aims to lift that number to one billion as it takes on the lucrative enterprise market, and has been hot on the acquisition trail.

“It’s been an extraordinary year for all of us at Canva as we celebrate remarkable growth and increasing demand for our business,” Mr Obrecht said, adding it had hired 1000 extra staff this year.

“We’re really excited to be empowering more than 200 million people in 190 countries with the simplicity, access, and power of our product. While we’re incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made, we’re just getting started and we’re looking forward to a whole lot more to come.”

From left: Canva co-founders Cameron Adams, Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins. Picture: John Feder

The past few years have also been big for Ms Perkins and Mr Obrecht, who married on Rottnest Island in 2021 and welcomed their first child in early 2022.

The new valuation comes after Mr Obrecht said Canva completed a “number of investor transactions”, adding “demand for Canva shares continues to surge”. It follows a share sale in April being oversubscribed by 150 per cent on its initial target, reaping $US2.4bn.

But he said the company wasn’t in a hurry to float, despite investors anticipating an Atlassian-style listing in the US.

“At some point we’ll IPO. There’s no big rush. It will happen in the coming years, no doubt. But it won’t happen this year,” Mr Obrecht told The Australian last week.

Rick Baker - partner at Blackbird, which first invested in Canva in 2013 - said the new valuation reflected the speed of the company’s growth.

“Canva continues to perform and grow at a rapid pace. We’re seeing the continued results of the product expansion over the past couple of years: the roll out of the work suite, AI tools and collaboration,” Mr Baker said.

“This transaction sees Canva’s valuation march on up as we would expect from such strong performance.”

Canva has made a series of acquisitions to beef up its business, including buying Photoshop rival, the UK-based Affinity, for an undisclosed sum in March. It backed up the deal by buying Sydney-based Leonardo.ai – which had been touted as the next Canva and had built its own artificial intelligence model – in July, also for an undisclosed sum.

It also has been launching new products, including Dreamlab, which integrates Leonardo’s model, to make it easier for people to create visual communications via simple verbal prompts.

Canva is aiming to amass one billion active monthly users and launched a new offering mid this year to take on the lucrative enterprise market.

Mr Obrecht said the company had been making strong progress in its efforts to sign more business customers, saying its enterprise revenue surged 300 per cent.

It comes as Microsoft has been muscling into the visual communication space, launching its own app.

But Mr Obrecht and fellow co-founder Cameron Adams have shrugged off the threat.

“I wouldn’t say they (Microsoft) are directly in the spaces that Canva and Leonardo are in,” Mr Adams said earlier this year.

Mr Obrecht said the biggest difference was Canva was “fun”.

“We’ve got this fundamental belief that work should be fun; and when it comes to visual communication the data proves that engaging rich media visuals gets customers – and as a business, if you try to choose a visual communication tool, you want to choose one that has the best chance of engaging your customers, being internal or external,” he said.