Updated posts 2026
Canva Expands Portfolio 2024: In a world where business deals often start with big events, Canva’s latest acquisition began with something plainer — a direct message.
Cameron Adams, Canva’s co-founder and chief product officer, sent a LinkedIn message to Affinity, the design software provider. Despite Affinity’s limited online presence, Adams reached Ash Hewson, the company’s managing director and CEO, and a series of conversations followed.
Affinity, along with its parent company Serif, has been acquired by Canva after seven weeks of negotiations.
According to Adams, the deal moved faster than any Canva had completed previously, though he did not disclose financial terms.
Canva has grown considerably since its early days, raising over $570 million across funding rounds with investors including Bessemer Venture Partners and Felicis. The Affinity purchase marks a significant step in that trajectory.
Adams frames the acquisition as part of Canva’s push toward larger organisations and professional teams. Affinity’s software is favoured by design professionals, while Canva’s strength has been with business users and non-designers.
That difference is the whole logic of the deal, and the difficulty in it. Canva built an enormous user base by making design possible for people with no training, a proposition that professional designers have often regarded with suspicion. Affinity’s customers chose it specifically as a one-time-purchase alternative to subscription software from Adobe, and they tend to care about precision tooling rather than templates. Acquisitions of this kind succeed or fail on whether the buyer can serve both audiences without alienating either — and the smaller, more vocal professional community is usually the one that notices changes first.
Adams has pushed back on the suggestion that Canva has been acquisitive to excess, describing the company’s approach as focused rather than opportunistic. Previous purchases include Flourish, Kaleido, Smartmockups, Pexels and Pixabay, several of them European companies with established revenue.
Co-founder Cliff Obrecht has said Canva’s direct approach to mergers and acquisitions reflects its wider corporate culture, something Adams echoes in describing the conversations that led to the Affinity deal.
What began as a direct message has become a significant moment for both companies, and a demonstration of how much can follow from straightforward contact between the right two people.
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