Australia’s Canva expands A.I.-powered design business to Europe
Melanie Perkins, co-founder & chief executive of Australian graphic design firm Canva, says the business is in a “uniquely strong position” as it expands to Europe.
David Fitzgerald | Sportsfile | Getty Images
LONDON — Australian graphic design company Canva believes it is in a “uniquely strong position” to withstand industry headwinds as it embarks on a European expansion.
The Sydney-based software company opened its new Europe headquarters in London last month as it competes with tech heavyweights Adobe and Microsoft to attract individual and enterprise users to its design suite.
It comes as higher borrowing costs and a weakening economic outlook have prompted tech firms to slash jobs over the past year. But co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins said the nine-year-old company is well-placed amid wider pressures.
“Being profitable for the last six years, having a strong cash balance, all of those things have been extraordinarily important,” Perkins told CNBC.
Canva, which offers both free and paid tools for designing websites, presentations and social content, had annualized revenues of $1.5 billion in the year to May. It also has $700 million in cash reserves, the company said.
Of its 135 million global users, 16% are in Europe. Overall, around 15% are paid subscribers, of which 14 million are individuals and 6 million are businesses such as WPP, Unilever and Rolls Royce. It is now targeting growth in both those areas.
“We’ve made our paid products extremely affordable, so regardless of what’s happening in the macroeconomic environment, people are moving to Canva rather than away,” Perkins said of the service.
“We’ve certainly seen that happen and play out over the last couple of years as that economic uncertainty has kicked in,” she added.
Betting on ‘magic’ AI
Canva, a 2023 CNBC Disruptor, has not been immune from industry setbacks, however.
Despite reaching a peak valuation of $40 billion in 2021, the private company has since seen investors cut their valuations amid the darkening outlook. It also narrowly avoided implication in the collapse of start-up financer Silicon Valley Bank in March.
Meantime, growing scrutiny around artificial intelligence has coincided with the firm’s rollout of a new suite of AI-powered editing, publishing and design features, which attracted 10 million new users in the space of a month. Amid the fanfare surrounding the burgeoning technology, it has preferred to euphemistically dub the tools “magic.”
“That term ‘magic’ has been what we’ve referred to things as for almost a decade, and so that branding has been something we’ve carried through,” Perkins said.
Canva’s new suite of artificial intelligence-powered editing tools include Magic Edit, which allows images to be replaced with AI-generated alternatives.
Canva
Tech experts have increasingly been raising alarm bells about the threats AI poses to society, with Tesla CEO Elon Much and Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, among those to voice concerns.
Canva has partnered with OpenAI for its Magic Write tool, which auto-generates full bodies of text for presentations and blogposts based on prompts of a few words. But Perkins said the company is moving ahead cautiously, “over-indexing towards trust and safety.”
“There’s a lot of terms you can’t do in Magic Write. There’s no medical, no political, there’s a lot of categories that we’ve actually said it’s too risky at this point in time. We’re erring on the side of caution because this industry is so in its infancy,” she said.
An evolving creative industry
The creative industry is among those thought to be at risk of disruption by forthcoming tech advancements, with some platforms already capable of producing images and content previously produced by designers.
Still, Perkins said the tools are intended to streamline and simplify design processes, which she believes will “supercharge” what people can do.
“Every industry goes through radical transformations. Certainly, our industry’s not been distant from that,” Perkins said. “As new technology becomes available, the whole industry has to adapt and everyone has to learn new skills. I think that’s just happened time and time again.”
“When we launched Canva, people were like ‘oh, is this going to be the end of graphic design’ and it certainly hasn’t been the case. I think we’ve seen a much more prolific spread and demand for graphic design and visual communication across all organizations,” she added.
As the business approaches its 10th anniversary in August, it is hoping that continued adoption could fuel their ambitions to amass 1 billion users and become one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Asked whether that user target could occur within the next decade, Perkins said she was hopeful. However, on the prospect of a potential initial public offering, she was less forthcoming. “There’s nothing to speak of at this point,” she said.
Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.
Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Technology
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports
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