Aussie design platform Canva will acquire Leonardo.AI, a prominent generative AI content and research company and another one of Australia’s fastest-growing startups.

Leonardo.AI has been used by more than 19 million people to create production-quality images and videos. In the last 18 months, the platform has created one billion images. This acquisition is expected to bolster Canva’s vision of developing a world-class suite of visual AI tools. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Canva said the acquisition would accelerate investment in continued research and development and bring Leonardo’s foundational model to Canva’s community worldwide. Leonardo’s technology will complement Canva’s Magic Studio, the company’s suite of AI tools, which has been used more than seven billion times since it launched in 2023.

Leonardo.AI said its new home gave it the opportunity to produce new levels of AI innovation and grow the organisation’s scale.

Founded in late 2022, Leonardo.AI’s foundational model allows creators to generate images in any chosen aesthetic with simple prompts, create videos, sketch with AI, and custom-train models with their own datasets. Leonardo.AI’s new foundational model, Phoenix, offers unprecedented prompt adherence, coherent, accurate text in images and the ability to generate production-ready assets in one shot.

Canva has committed to continuing to invest in Leonardo’s standalone platform while integrating its technology throughout the company’s suite of Magic Studio products. The acquisition of Leonardo is Canva’s 8th acquisition, joining Affinity (2024), Flourish (2022), Kaleido (2021), Smartmockups (2021), Pexels (2019), Pixabay (2019) and Zeetings (2018).

“We’re thrilled to welcome Leonardo.AI to Canva – two Australian companies joining forces to bring world-first breakthroughs in AI and creativity,” Cameron Adams, co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Canva, said. “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.”

Leonardo.AI Founder and CEO, JJ Fiasson, said the deal marks the start of a new chapter which will accelerate the pace we innovate at Leonardo.Ai.

“Joining the Canva family means we can invest more deeply in scaling our AI research efforts globally, and move even faster to deliver new features and functionality to creatives worldwide,” he said.