Leonardo’s Acquisition to Bolster Canva’s Generative AI Efforts

Australian-based graphic design company Canva has unveiled plans to acquire Leonardo AI. VentureBeat reported that the Canva-Leonardo AI partnership will see Canva integrate Leonardo’s proprietary technology into its entire AI products suite.

Leonardo AI is a tech-startup that leverages generative AI to create art and images using openly available Stable Diffusion AI models. Canva has not made public the financial terms of the acquisition deal. However, the giant graphic design company confirmed that the entire team at Leonardo will be joining its AI team.

Dynamic Field

The Canva-Leonardo AI collaboration will be instrumental in enabling Canva to maneuver the ever-changing graphic design space.

“This field is constantly evolving, and Leonardo’s technical leadership and community impact can’t be overstated. Bringing our worlds together will accelerate each of our teams’ work, taking us from strength to strength, and we can’t wait to get started,” Canva Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Cameron Adams said.

The new partnership is part of Canva’s long-term efforts to build its AI capabilities to enhance its competitiveness against emerging creative companies like Ideogram, Adobe, Midjourney, and Stability AI.

In 2019, Canva unveiled its background removal capabilities. However, the real push towards AI integration didn’t happen until 2022 when it acquired visual AI platform Kaleido and launched its Text-to-Image tool. Shortly after, Canva launched Magic Studio, its full-fledged AI tools suite. These tools have been used over seven billion times.

The new partnership enables Canva to leverage Leonardo AI generative offerings to continue advancing its mission.

In a statement posted on its website, Canva said, “With the addition of Leonardo, we’ll continue on our mission to lead innovation in the ever-evolving design and visual AI ecosystem.”

Leonardo’s Value Add

For two years now, Leonardo AI has been optimizing video and game asset production. Its founders wanted to cut down on long development cycles and high game and video production costs. The startup expanded its tech application to other areas including marketing, advertising, and product design.

Leonardo AI offers users unique features that include fine-grained control, real-time canvas, and character referencing to support direct creative generation. Within two years of launching, the platform has made significant headway in the highly competitive creative AI space.

“In a short time, the Leonardo team already has an impressive track record of innovation and excellence when it comes to AI-generated photos, graphics, and videos. Today, more than 19 million people use their products just two years after launching,” Canva added.

Opportunity to Scale

For Leonardo AI, Canva-Leonardo AI generative offerings present an opportunity to scale and grow its user base. Besides expanding its models and product features, Leonardo AI will leverage Canva’s wide reach to grow. Integration of its Phoenix model into Canva’s Magic Studio will give over 190 million Canvas users instant access to Leonardo’s novel AI technology.

“We will be using this acquisition to supercharge Leonardo’s platform and user growth, we also plan to rapidly integrate Leonardo’s leading technology and their Phoenix foundational model into our existing suite of Magic Studio products, such as our AI image and video generator: Magic Media⁠,” Canva said in its statement.

Integration of Leonardo’s technology and model into Canva’s product will allow the graphic design company to serve its customers better. Canva creators will be able to create compelling visuals and fast-track the creative and strategic aspects of their work.