Canva Revolutionized Graphic Design. Will It Survive the Age of AI?

From the beginning, we had this Venn diagram: On one side is creativity, and on the other side is productivity. And as you might have guessed, in the middle is Canva. We really believe that people on the production side want more creativity, and that people on the creative side want to be more productive. So we found that was a sweet spot—it was a big gap in the market that we saw in the early days, and that’s where we continue to invest a lot of money.

What about you? How does Canva use Canva?

So big, so everything is real. Our engineers do their engineering documents in Canva, we do all-hands, I do all my mockup in it. I’ve used it for decision decks and idea decks and onboarding and recruiting and hiring—you name it, we use Canva for it a lot.

Its peak value was $40 billion in 2021. A year later, this was reduced to $26 billion. What’s going on?

I think it was a big change in the market. During that time, Canva has continued to grow rapidly, both in revenue and active users. We have made a profit for seven years and, so although the market [switched to caring] more about profit, fortunately we were already in that trend. Markets will appreciate different things over time, and markets will have bubbles and not bubbles. We always care about building a strong, lasting company with good foundations that serve our community. So it is not a concern what is happening out there in the market.

He pledged 30 percent of Canva—most of his equity in Obrecht—to doing good in the world. What does that mean to you?

It seems completely absurd that we have the prosperity we do all over the world, and there are people who still don’t have basic human needs. The first step we have taken is to partner with GiveDirectly, where we give money directly to people living in extreme poverty. [Canva has so far donated a total of $30 million to people living in poverty in Malawi.] I love the empowerment that gives them to be able to spend money on their community, on their family, on their basic human needs – to send their children to school, to get a roof over their heads. We have a long way to go, but we are very happy to have started that process.

He aims to reach 1 billion users. What is the plan to get there?

When we set that as a goal a few years ago, it seemed completely silly, but over the years, it’s gotten less and less. We need about one in five Internet users in every country to reach a billion. Now in the Philippines it is one in six internet users, and in Australia it is one in eight internet users. In Spain, it is one of 11. In the USA, it is one of 12. So at 200 million now, we’re a fifth of the way to a billion, and if we can keep growing as fast as we’ve been, hopefully we’ll get there.

Any plans for an IPO?

There is definitely something on the horizon.

This article first appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of WIRED UK.