Canva has designs on the pros following its largest ever acquisition

Australian start-up darling Canva has made its largest acquisition to date, targeting professional designers with the takeover of Photoshop rival Affinity for an undisclosed sum.

UK outfit Affinity was founded in 1987 and its subscription software, including Affinity Design, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher, is used by around three million people globally, many of whom are professional designers. That lucrative segment of users will be crucial for Canva if it wants to achieve its aspirations of becoming a design software giant.

Canva co-founders (from left) Cliff Obrecht, Cameron Adams and Melanie Perkins.

Canva’s free-to-use graphic design tools are popular for social media graphics and presentations, and co-founder Cameron Adams said his company had been previously focused on the 99 per cent of workers without design training. He said the Affinity acquisition was squarely about luring professional designers onto the combined Canva platform.

According to Adams, the deal came together in less than two months.

“We reached out to Affinity seven weeks ago, but we’ve been thinking about this space for a while,” Adams told this masthead.

“We did a lot of research around could we build this internally, or is there an acquisition, and looking at Affinity it was head and shoulders above everything else.

“The product is so high performance, and we were so excited when we made the first trip to Nottingham. Products aside, the people are probably the more important part, having met some of their key engineers, their creative director, their finance director, and of course Ash who is CEO. We think Affinity is a real secret weapon a lot of people haven’t discovered before.”

Adams said the Affinity products would be kept separate to Canva’s platform but would feature integrations over time.

“Our product teams have already started chatting and we have some immediate plans for lightweight integration, but we think the products themselves will always be separate,” he said.

“Professional designers have really specific needs.”

Affinity’s photo editor software.

Around 100 Affinity staff members will join Canva as part of the acquisition including the CEO of its parent company Serif, Ashley Hewson.

“We’ve worked tirelessly to challenge the status quo, delivering professional-grade creative software that is both accessible and affordable,” Hewson said in a statement.

“Canva’s commitment to empowering everyone to create aligns perfectly with those values. We couldn’t be more excited about becoming part of the Canva family and can’t wait to see what we will achieve together.”

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Canva was most recently valued at $US26 billion ($38.5 billion), giving it a similar valuation to Telstra and Woolworths.

‘It’s definitely our largest acquisition … but it will still be running pretty independently. We don’t want to change the magic sauce.’

Canva co-founder Cameron Adams on Affinity

“I think both sides are super happy. We can both see the value in it,” Adams said of the transaction value.

“It’s definitely our largest acquisition both in terms of price and also headcount. It’s the largest team we have absorbed but it will still be running pretty independently. We don’t want to change the magic sauce that it already has, it’s more about one plus one equals 10.”

For years now investors and analysts have pondered when and where Canva will list publicly, given any liquidity event would be a significant one for the Australian technology sector. Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht recently told a business summit that any public listing is more than 12 months away, but “probably not that early” with 2026 a more likely date.

Obrecht told the summit it was “obvious” Canva would IPO in America because Australian investors don’t understand tech as well, and that there were “higher multiples, and more sophisticated investors in the US”.

Canva is still without a chief financial officer, after Damien Singh quietly departed the design software company in February amid an internal investigation into allegations of inappropriate behaviour.

“Creating a safe environment for everyone is our number one priority,” a spokesman said at the time. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for inappropriate behaviour and we’re fully committed to thoroughly investigating and actioning any instances of this.”

Adams said that the company is still searching for the right leader to fill the position.

“We’ve got an incredible finance team, and they’ve managed to step in and really fill the gap for the moment,” he said.

“We’re definitely looking for the right leader there. So we’re willing to take out time to find exactly that right person who has that skill set for what we need, and really fits together with the team as well.”

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