Canva acquires animation and ad-tech startups

Canva announced the dual acquisition of Cavalry, a UK-based startup focused on 2D motion animation for advertising, marketing, gaming and generative art, and MangoAI, a stealth startup building reinforcement learning systems to improve video ad performance. Canva said Cavalry’s tooling will augment Affinity, the professional creative editing suite for photos, vectors and layouts that it acquired in 2024, revamped and made free last year; since then the software has been downloaded over five million times.

Canva said it plans to add motion editing to its suite. “By bringing Cavalry alongside Affinity, we’re closing that [motion editing] gap and unlocking a complete professional suite spanning photo, vector, layout, and now motion editing,” the company said. “Together, these tools form the foundation of a full-stack Creative OS for professional work, while preserving the depth and control professional creatives rely on,” it added.

United Kingdom

canva, cavalry, mangoai, affinity, motion editing, 2d animation, reinforcement learning, video ads, ad-tech, generative art