Canva acquires Affinity creative suite

Sydney, March 26: Canva Inc. acquired the Affinity suite of creative software popular with Mac users, securing its biggest acquisition to date in an effort to compete with Adobe Inc.

The deal, which is a mix of cash and stock, is valued at “several hundred million pounds,” Canva co-founder and chief operating officer Cliff Obrecht said. It’s the biggest outlay yet by Australia’s most valuable start-up, priced at $26 billion in its latest share sale, and marks a milestone in the expansion of its range of professional tools.

Joining Canva is the entire 90-person team of Nottingham, Uk-based Serif, the start-up responsible for Affinity’s portfolio of photo-editing, publishing and illustration software. Affinity’s apps have been featured in Apple Inc.’s presentations of creative products and are the “final piece in our jigsaw,” Obrecht said. They will now be used to complement Canva’s selection of artificial intelligence-powered tools as the Australian firm bolsters its offering of online workspaces.

Founded about a decade ago, Canva has grown into the most capable competitor to Adobe, the longtime dominant provider of software for graphics professionals. Adobe has added AI features throughout its products recently, but its shares have fallen more than 15 per cent this year after a $20 billion deal to acquire Figma fell through in December.

Investors have long viewed Canva as a candidate to go public, though the company hasn’t discussed plans for doing so. It recently completed a $1.5 billion secondary share sale, Obrecht said.

The start-up, which has focused on making easyto-use products targeted at people without formal design training, surpassed $2.1 billion in annualised revenue and has over 175 million users. It added over 90 million new users over the past 18 months, helped by new AI features.

The Australian upstart has now acquired a total of seven companies in Europe.