Canva Leans Into AI to Defend Its $42 Billion Empire

As orchestras go, it was eclectic. Wearing plastic gold crowns, colored capes and wielding instruments that included a rubber duck, some of Canva’s top engineering staff belted out their version of Ode to Joy. Watching and encouraging in the Sydney auditorium were co-founders and married couple Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht. The early April event marked the culmination of a product reboot that executives hope will safeguard the $42 billion design platform in the rapidly evolving AI era.

Dubbed Canva AI 2.0, the new tools released Thursday, include a different way for its 265 million monthly users to generate visuals. Instead of starting with a templated design, customers can describe in conversational language what they want — a colorful, 12-page planning deck for a trip to Morocco, for example — and the AI agent will build and iterate it. Along with other workflow tools, the rebuild is Canva’s attempt to position the company not as a target amidst the growing angst about AI’s ability to destroy software company’s business models, but as one of the tech firms doing the disruption.