The month of October is an important one for Canva and the Australian company, with impressive growth, is stocking up on new products. In particular, it has just launched a new suite of AI tools intended for businesses. On this occasion, we had the opportunity to speak with the group’s director for Europe. Duncan Clark, Head of Europe at Canva, oversees all of the company’s activities on the continent and answers our questions. The opportunity for us to discuss the new features of Canva, but also the evolution of work with AI or the growth of Canva and the company’s ambitions in France and Europe.
Droptober 2024 – What’s new announced by Canva?
Canva strengthens its position in AI tools with the introduction of Dream Lab and significant updates to the Studio Suite. Dream Lab is a generative AI tool developed by Leonardo Ai that allows you to generate visuals and create a content library. As for the Studio Suite, around ten new features are appearing: improved version of Magic Writing, surveys and quizzes, interactive graphics and collaborative whiteboards with AI.
Canva also puts forward some figures, citing a content library with more than 100 million elements. This allows the company to boast a turnover of $2.5 billion and a number of active users exceeding 200 million worldwide. Finally, Canva is pleased with its progress in companies (NYSE (the New York Stock Exchange), Atlassian, HP, Ray White, DHL Express, Tecnocasa or Docusign).
Can you tell us about this new suite of AI tools? What’s new?
All of these updates aim to show the transformative impact of Canva within businesses. With the expansion of our generative AI capabilities in Magic Studio, powered by Leonardo.AI, we offer advanced features that make it easy for users to bring their creative ideas to life. These new tools help teams create impressive visuals from simple text, explore different design styles, and produce at scale, while simplifying complex design processes. Additionally, we’ve launched more than 40 new features in our Studio Suite, including improvements to Videos, Whiteboards and Documents, providing even more creative and interactive possibilities for teams.
We are committed to providing creative and engaging solutions to help teams work more effectively while ensuring our AI tools are powerful and simple to use. By continually investing in features that matter to our community, we’re moving toward our vision of making Canva the go-to tool for work.
How is the AI revolution changing the way we work?
The artificial intelligence revolution is profoundly transforming the way we work. AI is no longer just an automation tool, it is becoming a true partner in the creative process. For example, with Canva’s AI tools, teams can quickly generate high-quality visuals, optimize their workflow, and reduce production times from days to minutes. Tools like Studio Magic help bring ideas to life faster, making design accessible to everyone, regardless of experience level.
This change goes beyond speed: according to our recent Visual Economy report, tighter budgets and growing demand for content have prompted more than 79% of executives in France to turn to AI tools to meet their production needs. Additionally, 88% believe the quality of visual content has improved thanks to AI.
What is the role of Canva and its acquisitions, like Leonardo.Ai, in this transformation?
Since launching Canva in 2013, we’ve been on a mission to help everyone design. Acquiring companies like Affinity and Leonardo.Ai is part of our long-term strategy to strengthen our product portfolio while driving future innovation.
While it’s still early days for Leonardo.Ai, we’re already seeing promising progress with exciting integrations, like the one we’re announcing today. With Dream Lab, a generative AI tool, we transform creative ideas into dynamic photos and design; an integration carried out only three months after the acquisition of Leonardo.Ai. Although we are only just scratching the surface of the job market, our offering for businesses already shows very promising potential.
What’s Driving Canva’s Rapid Growth?
Since launching the Studio Suite two years ago, we have doubled our number of users. Over 30 billion designs have been created on Canva, with over 300 new designs generated every second. We’ve reached $2.5 billion in annual revenue and are celebrating 200 million monthly active users, of which 22 million are paying subscribers.
This growth — the equivalent of nine years of development in just 18 months — demonstrates the growing interest in our platform and the value it brings to its users.
We’re also seeing strong growth in our enterprise offerings, with 95% of Fortune 500 companies using Canva to optimize their creative processes.
What impact does AI have on this growth?
We have been investing in AI for over seven years, strengthening our commitment with global acquisitions like Kaleido AI in 2021 and Leonardo.Ai this year. AI is essential in our mission to make design accessible to everyone, enabling users, whether individuals or within businesses, to create high-impact content more quickly and easily.
AI is just one aspect of our vision, but we are seeing a global shift where emerging technologies like AI are becoming indispensable for innovative businesses. Our AI products have been used more than 10 billion times around the world. Users are curious to explore these tools to stimulate their creativity, especially in France, where our Magic Media tool is among the most used for creating images with generative AI, and French is one of the most used languages in our Translate tool.
How has Canva developed in France and Europe? What are its objectives in these regions?
Canva is experiencing strong growth in France, with 1 in 8 people using our platform each month. More than 25 million designs were created in France last month, or more than 830,000 per day, which is remarkable! Canva Presentations are particularly popular, with over 119 million created in the last year.
In France, both individual users and large businesses use Canva to create everything from social media posts to marketing materials. In Europe, companies like Tecnocasa and DHL Express use Canva to improve brand consistency and simplify their content creation processes.
Canva is redefining the role of design in the workplace, and it’s exciting to see this transformation happening within teams and businesses around the world. We want to strengthen our presence in Europe by providing everyone with the tools they need to create, collaborate and communicate visually. We’re committed to making design accessible to everyone, whether through our business offerings, Canva Education, or our free tools. As visual communication grows, we aim to become the leading platform for design in Europe and beyond.
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