Canva Acquires Leonardo AI to Bring Visual AI to Content Creators

• The popular creative design platform Canva has announced the acquisition of Leonardo AI.
• The acquisition is part of Canva’s goal to create a “world-class suite of visual AI tools.”

The popular creative design platform Canva has announced the acquisition of Leonardo AI, a well-known startup that offers an advanced generative AI (GenAI) platform for creating art and images. The company also confirmed that Leonardo’s entire workforce, including the executive team and AI researchers, will join its AI team. The financial terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed. 

With the acquisition, Canva plans to integrate Leonardo’s “Phoenix” foundation model and proprietary technology into its offerings. That said, Leonardo will continue to develop its web platform and capabilities as separate offerings.

Acquisition Part of Canva’s Move to Embrace GenAI

The acquisition is part of Canva’s goal to create a “world-class suite of visual AI tools.” Canva has been building its AI capabilities for some time to compete with creative companies like Stability AI, Midjourney, and Ideogram, as well as larger platforms like Adobe and Shutterstock. The company acquired Kaleido in 2021 and launched the first version of its Text to Image Tool. Canva followed it up with a full-fledged suite of AI tools called Magic Studio.

Besides Kaleido and Leonardo, the company has acquired Flourish, Affinity, Zeetings, Pixels, Smartmockups, and Pixabay. Affinity’s acquisition has helped Canva to compete with Adobe’s Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop, and Leonardo’s acquisition may help it to compete with Adobe’s Firefly GenAI models.

See more: Microsoft and OpenAI Incorporate Artificial Intelligence Features in Search Engines

What Canva and Leonardo Bring to Each Other

Canva is a platform founded to make it easier for users to design, regardless of their design skills. It offers a user-friendly and intuitive drag-and-drop interface, accessibility across devices, collaboration tools, and a vast library of templates. The platform particularly became popular among non-designers who liked its simplicity and affordability.

Leonardo is a GenAI-based content production platform. It was initially started to address high production costs and long development cycles in game development. It soon expanded to categories like marketing, advertising, fashion, product design, and education. It then launched capabilities for users, including real-time canvas and character referencing to help them direct creative generation.

The company then gained popularity in creative AI, competing with Adobe and Midjourney and generating over a billion images. In June, the company launched the Phoenix foundational model with a high prompt adherence.

With its acquisition by Canva, the company plans to continue its work with Canva’s scale and support. The company plans to use Canva’s resources, including human expertise, finances, and licensed content, to accelerate research and development and expand its platform capabilities.

According to Canva, it will help Leonardo train advanced AI models. However, it will not share any Canva user content unless its users expressly opt in.

Beyond Canva’s support and resources, Leonardo plans to leverage Canva’s scale. It plans to integrate its Phoenix model and technology with Canva’s Magic Studio of AI features, giving Canva’s users access to the new technology.

Overall, adding Leonardo to Canva will likely enhance the web-based creative suite and make it more competitive with Adobe’s Creative Cloud for its users.

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