Canva, the company behind the image editing service of the same name, has announced that it is acquiring Leonardo.Ai (Leonardo) for an unspecified sum. Leonardo is Canva"s eighth acquisition after Affinity (2024), Flourish (2022), Kaleido (2021), Smartmockups (2021), Pexels (2019), Pixabay (2019) and Zeetings (2018).
As Leonardo only launched at the end of 2022, there is a good chance you have not heard of it before. This platform offers an AI art generator, an AI video generator, and a transparent PNG generator for "true background-free visual elements". The company has also recently launched Phoenix, its first foundation model.
Canva said that this acquisition will give Leonardo the chance to further innovate in the AI space while also growing the organization"s scale. Canva will support Leonardo so that its current trajectory will be "supercharged" and will be able to "build an even more creative-centric generative AI platform globally."
Commenting on the acquisition, Cameron Adams, co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Canva, said:
"We’re thrilled to welcome Leonardo.AI to Canva - two Australian companies joining forces to bring world-first breakthroughs in AI and creativity. 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."
With this acquisition, Canva will be picking up Leonardo"s more than 19 million registered users from a wide variety of fields including advertising, marketing, and design. With Canva"s help, Leonardo will try to expand its products to a wider audience and Canva will no doubt have the chance to push some of its other products on Leonardo users.
Leonardo"s models, including the new Phoenix model, can be used to generate images in various styles including portraits, anime, painterly styles, and more, while its video generation tools can bring almost any concept to "dynamic life".