Canva does it again: $92.5 million raise values Aussie unicorn at $19.5 billion

Aussie unicorn and design tech darling Canva has secured another US$71 million ($92.5 million) in funding, more than doubling its valuation to US$15 billion ($19.5 billion).

The capital comes from new investors including T. Rowe Price Global Technology Fund and Dragoneer Investment Group, as well as repeat backers such as Blackbird and Skip Capital.

The fresh funding and new valuation also comes off the back of a year of strong growth for the Aussie unicorn, which has seen a 130% increase in revenue, year-on-year.

Recently, it surpassed the milestone of $500 million in annual revenue. And, according to a statement, it had achieved this growth while also remaining profitable.

Some 55 million people use the platform every month — a number that has more than doubled in the past 12 months. Those users hail from 190 countries.

Canva is also used by about 85% of Fortune 500 companies, the statement said.

Speaking to SmartCompany, Canva co-founder Cameron Adams said the past year has seen some interesting patterns emerge in the way people are using the platform.

The fastest growing design type has been presentations, he explains. That’s a signal Canva is no longer being seen as only a social media or marketing tool.

“We’re seeing all sorts of really interesting and unique use cases for visual communications popping up in the workplace.”

Adams suggests that this was already a trend that was underway. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, workplaces were evolving to focus more on flexible work and distributed teams, and the way they were collaborating was changing.

“The pandemic really accelerated it,” he says.

Now, the question is around the role visual aids and communication tool can play.

This latest funding will partly be put towards boosting and adding new features to the ‘presentations’ product for workplaces, and for creating a new suite of features intended to help support a hybrid, more digitally savvy way of working post-pandemic.

“Now more than ever, teams and workplaces around the world need scalable, collaborative and easy-to-use visual communication products to empower them to achieve their goals,” co-founder and chief Melanie Perkins said in a statement.

As mentioned, this new funding more than doubles Canva’s valuation. In June last year, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, an $87 million raise landed the scale-up an $8.7 billion valuation.

That was up from $4.7 billion in October 2019.

Dragoneer partner Christian Jensen said the company’s growth is testament to its insight into the “communication needs of an ever-evolving workplace”, and in its ability to execute on delivering tools to meet those needs.

“It’s incredible to see what this nimble and passionate company from Sydney’s emerging tech hub has been able to achieve in such a short period of time,” he added.

“We believe that there are only a small handful of truly special companies being built at any given moment — and Canva is one of them.”

Adams, for one, is confident that Canva will continue to “follow the pattern” of doubling and doubling again. This will be a $40 billion business before long.

The investment is “a validation” of how Canva has performed so far.

“It’s also looking forward to how we’re going to grow in the future”.