Canva buys Leonardo.Ai to take on Adobe's creative tools

If you create visual content online, Canva gives you the layout and tools like Leonardo.Ai give you the pixels. Now, the two Sydney neighbors are officially joining forces.

Canva has announced the acquisition of generative AI startup Leonardo.Ai. Leonardo.Ai will continue to operate as an independent platform with its current team, plans, and pricing intact, while its cutting-edge models will gradually make their way into Canva's core design interface.

18 months from launch to foundational model

Leonardo.Ai launched just over 18 months ago, focusing on speed, granular generation control, and accessible fine-tuning.

It rapidly built a loyal following ranging from hobbyists to creative professionals concepting films, moodboards, and character designs.

Just last month, the startup unveiled Phoenix, its proprietary foundational model. Phoenix significantly improved prompt adherence and cracked the tricky problem of hyper-accurate in-image text generation.

Staying in North Sydney with independent pricing

Both Canva and Leonardo.Ai were born in Sydney, Australia, sharing an ambition to democratize creative workflows through visual technology.

Canva is not folding Leonardo into a feature bucket. Leonardo's team will remain in its North Sydney digs, its standalone platform stays live, and subscription tiers remain completely unchanged.

Canva's backing gives Leonardo the capital to aggressively scale its research team across multiple modalities. In return, Leonardo's advanced image generation features will be ported directly into Canva's canvas.

Why it matters

For everyday Canva creators, this removes a major workflow headache. Instead of jumping to Midjourney or standalone generators and exporting assets, users will soon get high-end generative models—complete with clean in-image text—baked right into their layout tools. For Leonardo power users, keeping the platform standalone and pricing flat avoids the typical post-acquisition degradation.

For the broader design landscape, this is Canva taking the fight straight to Adobe. Adobe has built an imposing moat by deeply embedding its proprietary Firefly models into Creative Cloud. By acquiring Leonardo and its Phoenix foundation model, Canva secures its own in-house AI engine instead of relying on third-party APIs.

We think keeping Leonardo independent while absorbing its tech is a very smart play. AI creators are fiercely loyal to their dedicated toolkits; cannibalizing Leonardo would alienate its power users. Letting the startup push frontier research while Canva democratizes the output gives them the best of both worlds.