Canva, an Australia-based online graphic design platform backed by media company VaynerMedia, collected $60m in funding on Tuesday.
The round was co-led by venture capital fund Blackbird Ventures and VC firm Sequoia China, and included Bond and Felicis Ventures. It increased the company’s valuation from $3.2bn to $6bn.
Canva has built a cloud-based graphic design platform that provides access to free templates and hundreds of thousands of pictures and fonts to help users create images and videos for use on social media, in marketing, presentations and elsewhere.
The company provides a free offering and paid plans that include a larger library of assets, as well as the ability to collaborate on a project in real time and the option to establish a visual brand that is enforced across a client’s materials.
The platform has more than 30 million monthly active users across 190 countries. Canva will use the capital to open its first US office in Austin, Texas, and is considering strategic acquisitions.
Bond, General Catalyst, Blackbird Ventures, Sequoia China and Bessemer Venture Partners participated in an $85m round for the company in October 2019, five months after General Catalyst, Bond, Felicis Ventures and Blackbird had injected $70m in funding.
Canva became a unicorn in early 2018, when Sequoia China led a $40m round that included Blackbird and Felicis. The latter two joined Vayner Capital, the VC affiliate of VaynerMedia, and Matrix Partners in a $15m series A round in October 2015.
Matrix Partners, Shasta Ventures, Blackbird and AirTree Ventures had joined forces to invest $6m in Canva five months earlier, following $3.6m in equity financing from Shasta Ventures, Matrix Partners, Blackbird, Square Peg Capital and Founders Fund in 2014,
Matrix Partners, InterWest Partners, 500 Startups and assorted angel investors had provided $3m in seed capital for the company the year before.
