Canva is now worth a gobsmacking $54.5 billion - more than Woolworths and Telstra - after a $273 million raise

Global design platform Canva is now worth US$40 billion (A$54.5bn) following a fresh US$200 million (A$273m) funding round.

The value of the business has now nearly trebled in less than six months, and jumped more than five-fold in 15 months.

In April, Canva announced a A$93 million raise that valued the business at A$20 billion. It’s an 500% jump in its valuation in less than 12 months following an A$87 million raise in June 2020.

If the 8-year-old privately-owned Sydney tech company was listed on the ASX, it would make the top 10 companies by market capitalisation. Its valuation is now on a par with then market cap of Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group, and well ahead of corporate titans such as Woolworths ($49bn), Telstra ($47bn), Rio Tinto, Transurban and BNPL fintech Afterpay.

The raise was led by T. Rowe Price. New and existing strategic investors in the round include Franklin Templeton, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investments, Blackbird, Felicis, and AirTree Ventures.

The business now has more than 60 million monthly users in 190 countries, has more than doubled its revenue in 12 months and is on track to pass US $1 billion in annualised revenue by year’s end with a positive cash flow.

Canva co-founder and CEO, Melanie Perkins said the new funding will be used to accelerate growth, amid plans to more than double the size of the currently 2,000-strong workforce over the next 12 months.

“It has been incredible to see the continued growth of Canva across the globe over the last year,” she said.

“More than 60 million people are now using Canva for everything from launching startups to raising awareness for nonprofits, supporting remote learning, collaborating in distributed teams, and managing global enterprise brands at scale. We’re incredibly excited to be further accelerating our mission to truly empower the world to design.”

Presentation demand soars

Launched in 2013, Canva users have now created a staggering 7 billion designs – 120 new designs a second – from a library of more than 800,000 templates and over 100 million design ingredients including photos, videos, stickers, audio tracks, and illustrations.

The business says it’s seen teams adoption more than quadruple over the last year. The client list now includes Zoom, Salesforce, Marriott International, PayPal, and American Airlines.

The age of Powerpoint has been replaced by Canva, with more than 6 million presentations created weekly, with that figure tripling in the last 12 months.

The business has now now raised more than $770 million across 14 rounds of funding. Two of Canva’s earliest local investors were Blackbird Ventures and Skip Capital, the family VC firm led by Kim Jackson with her husband Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar.