Could a Canva IPO be right around the corner?

Australian graphic design company Canva burst onto the scene a few years ago and has quickly become the go to app for both professional graphic designers and newbies. 

The company has made several strategic moves recently, which has investors salivating at the prospect of a Canva IPO.

Word on the street is that it could come as early as 2025. So what is Canva and why is everyone so excited about an IPO?

It’s a graphic design software that makes creating your own custom graphics super easy.

If you’ve ever used Adobe Photoshop, you know how complicated it can be.  But Canva disrupted the game with things like one-click background remover. 

Here at Money Media, our team uses Canva literally every day to create thumbnails, custom graphics, Instagram posts and much more.

Canva is also leaning heavily into AI, with bots that can create an image or video, based on your prompt. And the company is also growing rapidly.  It has over 135 million monthly active users, and over 3,500 employees since launching in 2012.

And unlike many start-ups, Canva is already solidly profitable. All this success has made Canva a major competitor to Adobe in the design software space. 

In a bold move in April, Canva acquired one of Abode’s main competitors, Affinity creative software. The deal is Canva’s biggest acquisition to date and is reportedly valued at “several hundred million pounds.” 

Combining Affinity’s suite of photo-editing, publishing, and illustration software with Canva’s AI-powered tools, the stage is set for a showdown with Adobe.

Then just days later, the company raised even more eyebrows with a record-breaking secondary share sale, raking in US$1.5 billion!

A secondary sale is when an existing stockholder sells a portion of their shares in a private company to a third party.  

According to the Australian Financial Review, several early Canva employees and backers received a significant payday, with many becoming new millionaires from the sale!

Canva’s secondary share sale is reportedly one of the largest in global startup history!

This, along with Canva now posing a direct threat to Adobe, is setting the stage for next year’s potential IPO.

And that’s the bottom line.