Australia's Canva raises $200m at $40b valuation
Australian design and workplace collaboration platform Canva has raised $200 million at a valuation of $40 billion - up from $15 billion five months ago and $3.2 billion in 2019.
The investment was led by T Rowe Price, which also featured in a $71 million round in April alongside Dragoneer Investments, Blackbird Ventures, and Skip Capital. Dragoneer and Blackbird reupped in the latest round, as did Bessemer Venture Partners and longstanding backers Felicis Ventures and AirTree Ventures.
Incoming investors include Franklin Templeton and Greenoaks Capital. Sequoia Capital, which joined three prior rounds via its Chinese unit, is participated via its global equities fund, which targets late-stage private businesses and public companies.
Canva offers a range of free online graphics tools for designers, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, as well as paid products for corporate branding and flexible workplace collaboration. The service includes access to 800,000 templates and 100 million design elements such as photos, videos, and audio tracks.
Around 60 million monthly active users in 190 countries – including North Korea and Antarctica – use the platform to create 120 new designs every second. Products are offered in more than 100 languages. As of mid-2020, 55% of customers used the platform in languages other than English.
According to a statement, revenue has more than doubled in the past year and is on track to surpass $1 billion in annualized terms by the end of 2021 amid positive free cash flow generation. Canva achieved profitability at least as early as the first half of 2017, when a net profit of about $1.9 million was confirmed.
The eight-year-old company is now being touted as one of the fastest-growing software providers in history. The growth has been attributed to a strategic shift toward enterprise-facing products at a time when organizations – from large corporates to micro-businesses and nonprofits – have been increasingly pressured to digitize their operations and manage decentralized teams.
Corporate adoption has more than quadrupled in the past 12 months due to the shift to distributed working, with clients including Zoom, Salesforce, Marriott International, PayPal, and American Airlines. Company presentations are the fastest-growing use-case, with some six million created every week and the total number created having more than tripled in the past 12 months.
Canva has raised about $570 million in total, including a $60 million round last year led by Blackbird and Sequoia. That investment featured General Catalyst Partners and Bond Capital, which also led an $85 million round in 2019. Early backers include Five V Capital, Square Peg Capital, 500 Startups, Matrix Partners, Shasta Ventures, and InterWest Partners.
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