Canva funding: Every round, investor, and valuation (2026)

Canva makes browser-based design software for people who are not designers. Its users build presentations, social posts, videos, documents, websites, and print materials from templates. Canva gives the basic product away and charges for Canva Pro, Canva Teams, and enterprise plans, and more than 265 million people use it every month.

Canva has raised about $569 million in primary equity, meaning new shares sold by the company, across 11 rounds from 2013 to 2021. The last of them, a $200 million round in September 2021, valued it at $40 billion. Canva has not raised new money since.

Instead, it has run secondary sales, in which employees and early investors sell existing shares to new buyers. The latest, an employee share sale led by Fidelity in August 2025, priced Canva at $42 billion. Let's dive into Canva's funding history.

Canva's funding history has two halves. From 2013 to 2021 it raised 11 primary rounds, each at a higher price. Since 2021 every deal has been a sale of existing shares, so the money has gone to sellers rather than to the company.

Melanie Perkins got the idea for Canva while teaching design software to university students in Perth, where she watched her students struggle to learn programs like Photoshop. She and Cliff Obrecht first built Fusion Books, an online tool for designing school yearbooks, and used it to show that simple design software could sell.

Raising money for the bigger idea was slow. Perkins met Bill Tai, a Silicon Valley investor, in Perth in 2010, and he introduced the founders to his network, including Rick Baker, who went on to co-found Blackbird. Perkins has said more than 100 investors turned her down before the round came together.

The $3 million seed closed in 2013, after the founders brought in Cameron Adams, a former Google engineer, as technical co-founder. Commercialisation Australia, a government program, added a grant alongside it. Two extensions followed: Shasta Ventures and Founders Fund joined in July 2014, when Canva had about 600,000 users, and AirTree joined in May 2015, as Canva launched Canva for Work, its first paid product.

Felicis led the Series A in October 2015, and actors Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson joined the round. Blackbird and Felicis returned to lead the Series B a year later, which doubled the valuation in 12 months.

Sequoia China led the Series C in January 2018 and added Canva to the growing club of startup unicorns, companies valued at $1 billion or more. Two rounds in 2019 brought in the first large US growth investors. Mary Meeker's Bond made Canva its first-ever deal, co-leading the Series D with General Catalyst, and then led the Series E five months later as Canva expanded its enterprise sales.

Blackbird and Sequoia China co-led the June 2020 round. Remote work and online teaching had pushed usage to a record, and Canva raised a modest sum against a valuation nearly twice its previous mark.

T. Rowe Price and Dragoneer, crossover funds that invest in both private and public companies, joined Canva in April 2021. Five months later T. Rowe Price led the largest round Canva has raised, which set its peak price.

That round brought in Franklin Templeton, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital Global Equities, and most earlier backers took part again. AirTree sold part of the stake held by its 2014 fund in the deal while buying back in through a newer fund, according to the Australian Financial Review. At the time, Canva expected to pass $1 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2021.

Canva did not need another round because it generated its own cash. It says it has been profitable on a free cash flow basis for nine years, and it held $1.47 billion in cash at the end of June 2026. Since 2023, every Canva deal has moved existing shares from one holder to another.

Blackbird sold about 3% of its Canva holding to Coatue and ICONIQ in August 2023. In early 2024, Goldman Sachs ran a larger sale for employees and early investors, about 6% of the company, after buyers bid for about $2.4 billion of stock. Quadrant Private Equity also bought a stake of about 1.2% in 2024, part of it from Blackbird.

The August 2025 sale was built for staff. Current and former employees could sell up to $3 million of vested shares each at $1,646.14 per share, and Obrecht said the sale was significantly oversubscribed. Part of the pressure came from Canva's move of its parent company to the US in early 2025, which the Australian Taxation Office treated as a taxable event for staff share holdings.

Smaller buyers have kept arriving. Robinhood Ventures Fund I, a listed fund that gives retail investors exposure to private companies, bought about $25 million of Canva's Class A common stock in June 2026. Employees and some early investors pushed for another sale in 2026, but none had been announced by October.

Canva's valuation rose about 240-fold in six years, then fell by a third in 2022, recovered past its peak in 2025, and fell again in 2026. Since 2021, no new primary round has set the price. The marks below come from share sales, fund filings, and investors' own valuations.

Every primary round from the Series A onward priced Canva above the one before it, and most more than doubled the price. The Series C came in at 2.9 times the Series B, and the Series D at 2.5 times the Series C. The two 2021 rounds alone lifted the valuation 6.7-fold in 15 months.

Those rounds were small next to the prices they set. Canva's peak price was about 70 times all the primary capital it had raised, which kept dilution low for the founders and early funds. The concentrated cap table that resulted is laid out in how Canva's ownership is split among its founders and backers.

Rising interest rates in 2022 hit growth software prices, and Canva's investors marked their stakes down. Franklin Templeton cut its mark by about a third in March 2022, and T. Rowe Price wrote its holding down by 44%. The Australian funds followed later that year, and the 2023 and 2024 share sales traded close to their lower level.

The recovery came from revenue. Canva's revenue roughly doubled between 2022 and 2024, according to its filings with the Australian regulator ASIC, and share trades in October 2024 lifted the price by about a quarter. The August 2025 sale put Canva above its 2021 peak and, according to Startup Daily, close to the market value of Atlassian, the other Sydney software giant, which went public in 2015 with founder control through dual-class shares.

The 2026 cuts trace to the cost of running AI features. T. Rowe Price lowered its mark to $1,496 per share by March 2026, and Franklin Templeton to $1,541 by June. In August, Blackbird and AirTree had independent valuers cut their marks again.

The lowest figure is Canva's own. Its independent valuation for the annual employee share issue fell about 20% from a year earlier. No investor is known to have bought at that price, though shares on the trading platform Hiive were offered at about a 29% discount to the $42 billion mark.

Canva's investors fall into four groups: the Australian venture firms that backed it first, the US venture and growth investors that led its middle rounds, the mutual fund managers that led its last primary rounds, and the buyers of its secondary shares.

Blackbird is Canva's largest venture shareholder. Rick Baker wrote Blackbird's first Canva cheque in 2013, before the firm had closed its first fund, and Blackbird joined every primary round through 2021. By June 2023, Canva made up about 85% of the value of Blackbird's 2013 fund, according to the Australian Financial Review.

AirTree and Square Peg, two other Australian venture firms, also made large returns. Square Peg co-founder Paul Bassat, who also co-founded the job site Seek, was a seed angel, and Square Peg's first fund grew about tenfold with Canva as a key holding. All three firms have sold some shares in the secondary sales while keeping stakes.

Felicis led the Series A and returned in most later rounds. Sequoia China, which split from Sequoia Capital and renamed itself HongShan in 2023, led the Series C and co-led the 2020 round.

Bond and General Catalyst arrived in 2019 as Canva began selling to companies rather than only to individuals. General Catalyst has backed three Canva rounds. Its CEO Hemant Taneja said in May 2026 that Canva has no need to go public. No investor board seats have been disclosed.

T. Rowe Price led the $40 billion round, and Franklin Templeton, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Bessemer joined the 2021 rounds. Crossover funds like these usually buy into late-stage private companies ahead of an IPO and hold through the listing. Five years on, Canva has not given them one.

Because T. Rowe Price and Franklin Templeton run US mutual funds, they report the value of their Canva shares in public filings. That makes them the most frequent public source of Canva's price between deals. Both carried Canva at $42 billion at the start of 2026, before cutting their marks.

Coatue and ICONIQ bought Blackbird shares in 2023, and Quadrant Private Equity bought into Canva in 2024. Fidelity led the August 2025 sale, with JPMorgan Asset Management as a new investor. Robinhood Ventures Fund I and Stack Capital, a listed Canadian fund that bought about $8 million of Canva shares in 2024, gave public investors indirect access.

Celebrity and executive investors include Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, and former Disney CEO Bob Iger, who bought a personal stake in 2022. Bill Tai, an early angel, was looking to sell some of his shares at the $42 billion price in 2026.

Perkins and Obrecht, who are married, hold the largest individual stakes. TechCrunch put their combined stake at about 30% in 2021, while Forbes estimated 18% each in 2026, with Cameron Adams at about 9%. Perkins and Obrecht have pledged to give most of their wealth away through the Canva Foundation.

Canva's venture money paid for its growth up to 2021, but its own cash flow pays for most of what it does now. Statutory accounts filed with ASIC show losses driven by share-based pay to staff, while operating cash flow rose to $263 million in 2024. That cash, and Canva's shares, now fund three things: acquisitions, AI, and people.

Canva buys companies to add content and professional tools. It bought the free stock photo sites Pexels and Pixabay in 2019, the background-removal tool Kaleido and the mockup maker Smartmockups in 2021, and the data visualization company Flourish in 2022.

The bigger deals came in 2024. Canva bought Affinity, a UK maker of professional design, photo, and publishing software, and made it free in October 2025. It also bought Leonardo.ai, a Sydney image generation startup, paying partly in Canva shares. In 2026 it added the animation tool Cavalry, the AI startup Mango.AI, Doohly, Simtheory, and the marketing software company Ortto.

Canva builds some of its own AI models to keep costs down. Its research team of about 140 people launched the Canva Design Model in April 2026, and Canva says its in-house video and image models are far cheaper to run than frontier models. It has also invested in its suppliers, joining Black Forest Labs' $300 million Series B and taking a stake of just over 1% in the Australian compute provider Sharon AI.

AI is also a distribution channel. Users held more than 26 million conversations with the Canva app inside ChatGPT by October 2025, which ties part of Canva's growth to ChatGPT's subscription and platform business. In 2026 Canva added integrations with Anthropic's Claude Design, Google Gemini, and Meta's Muse.

Canva had about 5,500 staff in June 2026 and plans to keep headcount growth below 10% this year. It has never run a mass layoff. The secondary sales double as part of its pay, because they turn employee stock into cash without an IPO.

Canva also pays the designers who supply its templates and content. In 2023 it set aside $200 million over three years for content and AI royalties to its creator community.

Canva's growth push is aimed at companies. Its business with customers of more than 25 seats reached $500 million in annualized revenue at the end of 2025, doubling in a year, and Canva Docs and Canva Sheets put it in competition with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. On the professional side, Canva ProSuite, launched in September 2026, bundles Affinity, Cavalry, Flourish, and Leonardo against Adobe, whose widely held ownership puts its AI spending under quarterly scrutiny. A Canva spokesperson said in September 2026 that being private gives it "the freedom to make big bets."

The product plan rests on AI. Canva AI 2.0, launched in April 2026, added connectors to other apps, scheduling, AI inside Canva Sheets, and a new version of Canva Code. The trade-off is cost: Canva cut its 2026 revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20% because of the expense of serving AI features, even as revenue grew 25% in the June quarter.

The IPO is the open question. Obrecht said in April 2026 that Canva is fully IPO ready and that he assumes a listing in 2027, but the 2026 markdowns and the trading of Figma's post-IPO shares give public investors a tough comparison. Canva has the cash to wait. Its employees have less patience, and a listing or another share sale is the only way most of them can turn their stock into money.

Canva has raised about $569 million in primary equity across 11 rounds, from a $3 million seed in 2013 to a $200 million round in September 2021. It has not reported any debt. Separately, staff and investors have sold more than $2 billion of existing shares since 2023, but that money went to the sellers, not to Canva.

Canva's main investors are Blackbird, Felicis, Sequoia China (now HongShan), Bond, General Catalyst, T. Rowe Price, Franklin Templeton, Dragoneer, Bessemer, Greenoaks, AirTree, and Square Peg. Buyers in its secondary sales include Fidelity, JPMorgan Asset Management, Coatue, ICONIQ, Quadrant Private Equity, and Robinhood Ventures Fund I.

Canva was valued at $42 billion in its August 2025 employee share sale, above the $40 billion of its last primary round in 2021. In 2026, investors cut their marks to between $34.9 billion and $39.3 billion. Canva's own valuation for its employee share issue was $31 billion in August 2026.

No. Canva is private and has not filed for an IPO. COO Cliff Obrecht said in April 2026 that he expects a listing in 2027. In early 2025 Canva moved its parent company to the US, a step companies often take before a US listing.

Canva is owned by its founders, employees, and investors. Co-founders Melanie Perkins (CEO) and Cliff Obrecht (COO) hold the largest stakes, estimated at about 30% to 36% combined, and Cameron Adams holds a smaller one. Blackbird is the largest venture shareholder, alongside T. Rowe Price, Franklin Templeton, and the other funds that have bought in since 2013.