In the AI race, Canva cofounder and CEO Melanie Perkins doesn’t believe in ‘reinventing the wheel’
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Women now account for at least half of top business schools' students, Kamala Harris warns of AI's "existential" threats, and Canva's CEO explains her AI strategy. Have a restful weekend!
- Magical thinking. Earlier this year, Canva cofounder and CEO Melanie Perkins told me about the major problem she saw in the AI landscape: It was too fragmented, with products for writing or for video but nothing that incorporated everything in the same place.
A few weeks ago, the Sydney-based CEO took a step toward filling that gap—and seizing that business opportunity—with the launch of Canva's Magic Studio. Released in October, the suite of tools creates AI-generated images, videos, presentations, and writing. It can shuffle between those formats, turning a slideshow deck into a t-shirt design. It translates across languages and learns a company's brand voice to create visuals and text.
"It's the first all-in-one AI design platform on the market," Perkins says. "The real power of Canva comes from being able to have it all integrated into workflows." She believes that AI "supercharges" Canva's initial goal, set a decade ago, of making design more accessible for everyone, including those with no design experience.
The AI race has tech founders competing with each other, but Perkins says she doesn't believe in "reinventing the wheel." Canva incorporates technologies like ChatGPT into its platform and the company has built out its AI team through acquisitions, including the 2021 purchase of Kaleido, a startup that specialized in removing backgrounds from videos. That organization's team has been critical to building out Canva's AI platform.
With a valuation of $26 billion, down from a $40 billion high, Canva is still the highest-valued female-founded and -led startup in the world. It's getting closer to a U.S. listing, although Perkins declines to comment directly. The 36-year-old CEO believes in the power of storytelling—visual storytelling in particular. As she aims to build a top-tier tech company that competes with giants like Microsoft and Google, she's hit a storytelling trifecta: Canva's entry into the AI hype cycle coincides with the startup's 10-year anniversary and its potential upcoming Nasdaq listing.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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