Canva founders: Cliff Obrecht, Melanie Perkins and Cameron Adams Australian-founded design platform Canva has shifted to a new strategy targeting the top end of the media and marketing world as it seeks to go beyond its consumer-focused roots to take on the likes of Adobe.Long positioned as a more affordable alternative to Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite of tools, Canva is now making a broader play not just to provide an easier to use version of Photoshop, but to underpin an entire marketing production line.That shift was evident in last week’s launch of Canva AI 2.0, a platform upgrade that, in the words of co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins, is designed to be “a true creative partner” for in-house marketing teams.Speaking to journalists ahead of the launch, Perkins said: “We are evolving from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design tools at the centre of how work gets done.ADVERTISEMENT “The entire process of creation is broken across so many tools and workflows… and we think there is a better way. [Canva AI 2.0] turns ideas into designs from that very first idea through creation and publishing, all in one place.”Canva’s new iteration appears squarely aimed at organisations producing marketing content at scale, including social media posts, online brand campaigns and presentations, although it does not yet extend into video or audio production.The marketing play was further evidenced through integrations with workplace tools such as Slack and Gmail, plus the ability to automatically draw in web and audience research while creative work is developed.Over the weekend, Canva announced a two-year partnership with AI giant Anthropic allowing users of its Claude Design offering to move their work between the platforms.Canva has previously made a play into Adobe’s territory in high-end creative production, with the acquisition of Serif, maker of the Affinity creative software suite, in 2024.However, other acquisitions in the last two years provide a clearer indication of where the company is heading: generative AI and marketing infrastructure, including Leonardo.ai in 2024, creative intelligence start-up Magicbrief last year and more recently the AI technology management platform Simtheory. Last month, Canva acquired the digital outdoor platform Doohly.At the end of last year, the company also launched Canva Grow, its audience measurement and marketing performance platform,  move described by Mutinex founder Henry Innis as one of the clearest indications yet that Canva is moving from a creation tool into a fully-fledged AI-powered marketing technology stack.“The capacity to bring the whole loop into one substrate is the real change,” Innis wrote of the Canva Grow launch back in October. “When the canvas, the ad manager, and the intelligence sit in the same pane of glass, you’re not “speeding up humans.” You are re‑wiring the work so that the marginal unit of output is software‑native.”During the launch of Canva AI 2.0. Perkins revealed that the company’s business product is now netting US$500 million in revenue, currently only 14% of the company’s overall US$3.5 billion revenue, but growing by 100% year-on-year.In what may not entirely have been a coincidence of timing, just two days before Canva’s major announcement, Adobe made its own new pitch to the marketing community, unveiling an upgrade that will embed its generative AI tool Firefly more deeply into its flagship products such as Photoshop and Premiere Pro.Adobe, which primarily serves professional creative agencies and teams producing work across image, video and audio formats, appears to be reinforcing its position at the top end of the creative market.However, Adobe and rival Figma have recently seen their market values plummet globally as AI giant Anthropic increasingly pushes into the design and marketing space with launches such as Cowork and Claude Opus 4.7.With Canva reportedly building out a 120-strong research team and preparing for a potential IPO as early as next year, the company now appears to be moving quickly to entrench its position as a key player in the AI marketing race.The company clearly still sees significant room for customer acquisition, with chief operating officer Cliff Obrecht noting during the same press briefing that “only a tiny portion of those that are using it to the full agentic power and the capabilities that it has.”“We are making agentic AI simple and accessible to the quarter of a billion people using Canva and beyond,” he added. 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