Canva is expanding beyond its roots as an easy-to-use design platform, announcing the acquisition of two specialist startups to strengthen its professional animation and marketing capabilities. The company has bought UK-based Cavalry, a 2D motion design tool, and MangoAI, a stealth startup focused on optimizing video ad performance.

Cavalry is known in creative circles for its powerful 2D motion animation software used across advertising, marketing, gaming, and generative art. Its technology will be integrated into Affinity, the professional-grade creative suite Canva acquired previously, which already supports advanced photo, vector, and layout editing.

Affinity, which Canva redesigned and made free to download, has been installed millions of times, signaling strong demand from professional and prosumer creators. By layering Cavalry’s motion tools on top of Affinity’s existing capabilities, Canva aims to close a long-standing gap in its offering: high-end motion design for complex campaigns and content.

Canva has framed the move as a step toward building a “Creative OS” for professionals, where photo editing, illustration, layout, and motion graphics sit inside a single, tightly integrated environment. The company has emphasized that while it is broadening access to creative tools, it intends to preserve the depth and control required by expert users.

The second acquisition, MangoAI, pushes Canva further into performance-driven marketing. The startup has been developing reinforcement learning systems that help brands create, launch, and iteratively improve video ads by learning from real-world outcomes. Its first product focused on closing the loop between creative production and campaign performance.

MangoAI’s founders bring heavyweight data science credentials. Co-founder Nirmal Govind, formerly Vice President of Data Science and Engineering at Netflix, will become Canva’s first Chief Algorithms Officer. Co-founder Vinith Misra, who previously worked as a data scientist at Netflix and Roblox, will focus on enhancing Canva’s marketing products.

The deals build on Canva’s recent push into marketing technology. The company previously acquired Magicbrief, a marketing intelligence startup, and launched Canva Grow, a tool for creating assets and measuring their performance across platforms. Canva Grow has gained early traction with brands using it to produce and publish static content, particularly to Meta’s social platforms.

By combining Cavalry’s motion design engine with MangoAI’s optimization systems and Canva Grow’s workflow, Canva is positioning itself not just as a design tool, but as an end-to-end marketing and creative performance platform for businesses of all sizes.