Canva has acquired Leonardo.ai, a generative AI content and research startup, to deepen its investments in AI technology. The acquisition will bring 120 employees from Leonardo.ai to Canva, including the executive team, and will allow Leonardo.ai to continue operating independently with a focus on innovation and R&D.
Leonardo.ai offers collaboration tools and a private cloud for models, as well as APIs that let customers build their own tech infrastructure. Its Live Canvas feature enables users to create photorealistic images based on text prompts in real-time.
The acquisition will contribute to Canva’s Magic Studio generative AI suite, which is expected to be integrated with Leonardo.ai’s technology. This integration may include making existing tools more powerful or introducing new capabilities.
Canva has been investing in generative AI since December 2022 and has acquired several companies in the space, including Kaleido, a background removal service for images and video. The acquisition of Leonardo.ai is Canva’s eighth overall and its second this year.
Leonardo.ai’s models are trained on licensed, synthetic, and publicly available data, but it’s unclear how they train their flagship model Phoenix, which has legal ramifications given the potential use of copyrighted content without permission.
Canva has raised over $560 million and generates close to $2 billion in revenue, with over 180 million monthly users worldwide. The acquisition is seen as a significant next step in building Canva’s all-in-one visual AI offering.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/29/canva-acquires-leonardo-ai-to-boost-its-generative-ai-efforts/