In a funding round led by T. Rowe Price, Sydney, Australia-based graphic design firm Canva raised $200 million in new capital. The funding round included new and previous investors including Franklin Templeton, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investments, Blackbird, Felicis and AirTree Ventures. Now valued at $40 billion, Canva will use the money to double its workforce over the next year. The company currently has 2,000 employees.

“Visual communication has emerged as a universal need for teams of every size across almost every industry,” said Melanie Perkins, Canva co-founder and CEO, in a September 14, 2021 news release. “It has been incredible to see the continued growth of Canva across the globe over the last year. 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.”

Alan Tu, portfolio management of T. Rowe Price Global Technology Fund, explained why the company felt this was a good investment.

“The need for both visual communication and online collaboration has become increasingly paramount and is driving Canva’s exceptional growth and adoption in teams and workplaces of every size and across many industries. We’re pleased to extend our investment supporting Canva on its mission to democratize visual communication,” Tu said.

Canva’s business model and reach

Launched in 2013, Canva makes graphic design simple, affordable and accessible for anyone, including those on a tight budget, users with little or no design experience, and large corporations. Using a freemium model, Canva offers a free design product as well as subscription-based products which include additional features and options.

Currently, Canva has more than 60 million monthly active users in 190 countries, including individuals, small nonprofits and large companies like Salesforce, Marriott, Intel, American Airlines, Zoom and PayPal. More than 7 billion designs have been created in 100 languages since the company’s launch. More than half a million of Canva’s customers use a version of the paid product. According to TechCrunch, Canva estimates they will surpass $1 billion in annualized revenue by the end of this year.

Canva plans

Canva offers three plans: free, pro and enterprise. The company offers 30-day free trials of the Pro plan for people who want to try before they buy.

Free plan: Canva’s free plan has more than 250,000 free templates, over 100 design types (social media posts, flyers, business cards, posters, logos, etc.), hundreds of thousands of free photos and graphics, 5GB of cloud storage and the ability to share designs with team members.

Pro plan: Canva offers its Pro plan for $119.99 a year, billed annually, or $12.99 a month, billed monthly, for firms with up to five people. The Pro version has everything the free version offers plus over 100 million premium stock photos, videos, audios and graphics, over 610,000 premium and free templates, the ability to save and brand designs, plus premium features like removing image backgrounds, magic resize and 100GB of cloud storage.

Enterprise plan: Can offers an enterprise plan for larger companies and pricing is tailored toward an organization’s needs. It includes all of the features of the free and Pro plans plus team access, team uploads, workflow approvals, unlimited storage, single sign-on, 24/7 enterprise-level support and more.

Insider Take

As Canva users, we are excited for Canva and what this could mean for the company. The company is already providing an invaluable resource to individuals and organizations of all sizes; doubling the company’s staff can exponentially grow the resources they offer their customers, whether free or paid customers. It also will allow Canva to expand its reach and compete on at a higher level. From a subscription standpoint, this is a great model with something to fit every need and budget. This model will continue to fuel the company’s growth while helping other organizations and companies be successful.