Creative company Canva ended 2025 on a high note with a 20% increase in monthly active users. This growth was partially propelled by the adoption of its AI tools. According to the company, Canva had more than 265 million monthly active users and over 31 million paid users in 2025. That user base helped push its annual recurring revenue to $4 billion by the end of the year, as stated by Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht.
The subscription-based company also saw its B2B business, which accounts for companies with more than 25 seats, grow by 100%, reaching $500 million in annual recurring revenue. While the majority of its business still comes from North America, Canva is seeing continued growth in international markets. To increase paying users, Canva has introduced lower-priced subscriptions in countries like Pakistan, Uruguay, Morocco, and Jamaica.
Canva’s AI investments are paying off. The company debuted a tool last year that lets users create mini apps and websites using AI. Obrecht noted the tool now has more than 10 million monthly active users. It has been successful enough that the company is thinking about putting AI at the center and acting like a “design agency in your pocket.” Obrecht explained this shift, saying, “Where we started was… we got the Canva platform, and we’re giving the Canva platform a bunch of AI tools. We’re inverting that now. We’re becoming an AI platform with a bunch of design tools. So you can think of it more like a cursor for design.”
This shift to AI comes as Canva faces competition from the likes of Adobe, Freepik, and Apple, which has pushed to become a full-packaged creator suite by bundling apps into a monthly subscription.
Canva is also actively integrating with chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude. By October 2025, users had more than 26 million conversations with the Canva app on ChatGPT. The company also claimed that Canva was one of the top 10 referred domains from ChatGPT.
Obrecht said the company is allocating resources to have Canva surface in LLM search results, along with working on SEO. He noted, “We really see ChatGPT or any of the LLMs as top of the funnel acquisition platforms.” While search is a big driving factor, traffic through LLM referrals is in double-digit percentages. The company is also working to have Canva surface more in chatbots.
Canva was last valued at $42 billion in a share sell. Obrecht stated last November that the company will go public in the next “couple of years.”