Canva debuts a new suite of agentic tools, as the design app quietly becomes one of the world’s most used AI services

Canva, the Australian startup that’s won over 265 million users with its design software, is launching a new suite of tools that combine visual creation and workflow automation, run by AI agents that respond to conversational prompts

Dubbed “Canva AI 2.0,” the new platform of services lets users create and alter designs using natural language, and connects to other services like Gmail, Slack, and Zoom in order to generate new content. The new platform also boasts persistent memory, allowing Canva to learn how people work, and can automatically update designs as brand imagery gets tweaked. 

“We had to rearchitect the whole Canva platform,” Cliff Olbrecht, Canva’s co-founder and chief operating officer, tells Fortune. 

Canva, founded in 2012, integrated generative AI functions onto its platform in early 2023, just a few months after ChatGPT’s release. (At the time, Fortune noted that the startup was wary of using the term “AI” to advertise its services, preferring the term “magic” instead)

Olbrecht describes Canva’s previous AI services—generating images and video, or generating a whole presentation—as “a design platform with AI services built on top.” With........

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