Canva plans to add the design platform to its image generation toolset for its 170M users
Design application Canva announced plans to acquire the image generator and AI creative platform Leonardo AI.
Canva plans to add Leonardo’s technology to its platform, with its Phoenix foundational model set to be added to Canva’s AI image and video generator Magic Media.
Leonardo will continue to operate independently and build on its existing products. No Canva user content will be shared with Leonardo unless they opt in.
“The partnership between Canva and Leonardo.Ai is set to unlock new levels of creativity and design in the generative AI space,” said Cameron Adams, co-founder and chief product officer at Canva. “We’ll be sharing more soon, so stay tuned!”
Canva is one of the most widely used online design tools on the internet, with the platform reporting it has more than 170 million global users.
In the past 12 months, it has sought to add AI tools to its platform, enabling users to create images and visuals for their content. The design platform was among the first plugins available for ChatGPT, allowing users to generate images directly in the chatbot.
Leonardo AI is an Australian startup that has developed foundation models capable of generating high-quality images and videos from text inputs.
Its Phoenix model can generate content faster than rival multimodal content creation models, like Stable Diffusion.
The model is designed to closely follow a user’s desired prompt, generating images that match the given text instructions, especially when creating detailed and specific visual content.
Phoenix also boasts the ability to generate clear and accurate text within images, something existing models struggle with.
The model will eventually be added to Canva products and services, enabling its users to generate new images to improve their content.
Before the acquisition, Leonardo had raised around $40 million in funding with backers including Smash Capital, Side Stage Ventures and Blackbird Ventures.
“With Canva’s backing, we will be able to supercharge the Leonardo AI platform and accelerate our pace of innovation,” the startup said in a press announcement. “We will be scaling up our research capability in a big way, expanding our global research team to enable them to work across many modalities and tackle more problems at speed.”
Leonardo is the second acquisition Canva has made this year, following its deal to purchase creative design platform Affinity in March.
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