Canva Acquires Affinity to Take on Adobe

Canva, makers of the popular online design platform, announced that it is acquiring creative software maker Affinity and its team of 90 employees. No price was given, but Canva told Bloomberg it was “several hundred million pounds.”

“We’re incredibly excited to welcome Affinity to the Canva team as we set our sights on empowering every kind of designer,” the Canva announcement post explains. “Trusted by more than three million creative professionals across the globe, Affinity’s award-winning suite of professional design software has become a sought-after solution for everything from photo editing to complex graphic and vector design. Together, we’re setting our sights on empowering every kind of team and organization to achieve their goals.”

This acquisition immediately catapults Canva into being a reasonable alternative to the Adobe Creative Cloud ecosystem, thanks to the combination of Canva’s online service—with over 175 million users—and Affinity’s powerful native applications for Windows, Mac, and iPad. That their respective solutions significantly undercut Adobe on price doesn’t hurt either.

Affinity’s suite includes Affinity Photo (photo editing), Designer (graphic design), and Publisher (page layout), each of which can be purchased individually as well. And unlike Adobe, there’s no subscription option, let alone requirement: These are standalone software applications. (I coincidentally just purchased the Affinity suite on sale, and its universal license gives me access to all these apps across each supported platform.)

Canva says that it will “unlock the power of Affinity’s technology within Canva over time,” and it promises more details soon. But it’s safe to assume the future involves AI: Canva also acquired Kaleido.ai, Pexels, and Pixabay in recent months.