Canva expands design tool portfolio with Affinity acquisition

The Affinity creative suite comprises three powerful applications that have garnered a loyal following among professionals:

First up is Affinity Designer, a vector graphics editor favored by illustrators, designers, and game developers for creating digital illustrations, concept art, logos, and web mock-ups. Then there’s Affinity Photo, a photo editor that rivals industry leaders, offering a full-fledged toolkit for basic editing, advanced retouching, and multilayer photo compositions. Lastly, you get Affinity Publisher, a next-generation page layout software that streamlines the creation of publications like books, magazines, marketing materials, and website mock-ups.

For Canva, a relatively young upstart founded about a decade ago, this acquisition marks a significant milestone in its quest to dethrone Adobe, the longtime titan in the creative software realm. While Adobe has recently integrated AI features across its products, its shares have taken a hit following the collapse of its $20 billion acquisition of Figma last December.

Canva, valued at a staggering $26 billion in its latest share sale, has been viewed by investors as a prime candidate for an initial public offering (IPO), although the company remains tight-lipped about such plans for now.

This acquisition is part of Canva’s broader European expansion strategy, having already acquired seven companies on the continent, including visual AI startup Kaleido.ai and image providers Pexels and Pixabay.