Canva Bolsters Professional Suite and AI Performance With Cavalry and MangoAI Acquisitions

Canva announced the simultaneous acquisitions of Cavalry and MangoAI on February 23, 2026, marking a major step in its quest to become a comprehensive visual communications platform. This dual acquisition strengthens both high-end professional creative tools and the underlying intelligence of its marketing suite. The move aims to eliminate fragmented workflows by providing a single ecosystem for designers and enterprises alike. The inclusion of Cavalry completes Canva’s professional creative puzzle by adding 2D motion design to its existing portfolio. Following the successful integration of Affinity, Canva now offers a full stack of tools covering photo editing, vector design, and layout. Cavalry is known for its procedural animation core, which allows for sophisticated, data-driven motion graphics that traditional tools struggle to match.

MangoAI brings a different kind of power to the platform through advanced reinforcement learning and data science. This technology is designed to create a closed-loop system where creative content is automatically optimized based on audience performance. By analyzing real-world results, MangoAI helps teams focus on high-impact ideas rather than manual iteration.

Significant leadership changes accompany these deals, including the appointment of Nirmal Govind as Canva's first Chief Algorithms Officer. Govind previously served as the VP of Data Science and Engineering at Netflix, bringing decades of experience in large-scale machine learning. Vinith Misra also joins the team from Roblox and Netflix to lead reinforcement learning efforts within the Research Lab.

Looking ahead, Canva plans to weave these capabilities into a unified Creative OS for professional work. This infrastructure will support seamless transitions between high-fidelity asset creation in the Studio layer and broad organizational distribution in the main app. The company is moving beyond simple generative tools toward predictive systems that ensure visual communication drives measurable business outcomes.