Latest news with #CanvaCode
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
$3 billion-in-revenue Canva is the most valuable unicorn founded by a woman. Melanie Perkins shares a look at her new AI coding tool
Good morning! AOC wants to ban Congress's "insider trading," Meta whistleblower testifies, and Canva's latest tool would have benefitted its founder. - Learn to code. When Melanie Perkins cofounded Canva over a decade ago, she didn't have a technical background. What she had was an idea—a vision for graphic design to be easier for people who weren't literate in Photoshop, and an understanding that with the rise of social media, communication was becoming more visual. Her lack of a technical pedigree was a factor in more than 100 VCs' decisions to pass as Perkins and cofounder (and now husband) Cliff Obrecht sought backing for their business. Sydney-based Canva is now the highest-valued female-founded and -led startup in the world and did $3 billion in annual revenue last year. And its latest product launch could make things a lot easier for the next founder who has a vision, but lacks technical experience. Canva yesterday announced the debut of Canva Code, a generative AI coding platform that can prototype apps and other products. Users can enter prompts like "build an interactive map of travel destinations" and be presented with the code to add that widget to a project. Perkins tells me she's been using it to build apps for people's birthdays—plus quizzes, tutorials, and games. And while AI-powered coding doesn't teach people to code, she hopes it plays a role in making coding less intimidating and more accessible—as has been the goal of organizations like Girls Who Code. "It'll be their entrée into coding, because all of a sudden you can see code that's generated and go in and edit it. It just starts to unlock people thinking in the land of code," she says. Perkins says that "so much" would have been different in the early days of Canva if she had this tool at the time. Now, she's even close to trusting it to build small features for Canva. "It's really great at designing single-purpose ideas," she says. "It completely changed our workflow...I had an idea on the way home the other day, and I was able to turn into a prototype and then get it user-tested within an hour, which is just completely crazy." That's the reality of the AI era; just before this product rollout, Canva laid off 10 of 12 technical writers, according to the Australian Financial Review. "Every single person is going to have to be upskilling into this new era," Perkins acknowledges. In addition to its coding tool, Canva unveiled Canva Sheets, a Google Sheets competitor. Canva's version incorporates its visual elements and AI studio, allowing users to generate and resize images by the thousands in a spreadsheet. Perkins says that 230 million people and 95% of the Fortune 500 are now using Canva—and that Canva's own IPO is still "on the horizon" but there's "no news" to report. Every time Canva announces a new suite of products, it calls it its biggest launch yet. Its recent launches have centered around becoming essential enterprise products worth paying for and incorporating AI. It's taking the next step here, with a wider remit than just competing with Microsoft and Adobe. Emma The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune's daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today's edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Canva is getting AI image generation, interactive coding, spreadsheets and more
Although there has been significant pushback from artists regarding the proliferation of AI design tools and the content used to train generative models, the companies making the software for creative work are nevertheless building AI into their toolkits. It's a signal of just how quickly AI has gained importance — regardless of what their customers say, graphics design software makers clearly seem to think they cannot survive without implementing some form of AI. The latest to double down on that strategy is Canva. The company on Thursday said it is adding a suite of new AI features to its platform, including an AI assistant, the ability to create apps with prompts, support for spreadsheets, and AI-powered editing tools. Called Canva AI, the company's AI assistant can perform a host of tasks, from creating images according to your instructions, or coming up with design ideas — say, collateral for social media or mock-ups for printing. It can even write copy and create documents. And by tapping into a new tool dubbed Canva Code, the assistant can also be prompted to create mini-apps, like interactive maps or custom calculators, that can then be integrated in designs. Canva has partnered with Anthropic for this feature, the Australian design company's co-founder and chief product officer Cameron Adams told TechCrunch. "Over the years, we have encouraged our teams to make interactive prototypes because static mockups don't truly represent the experience we are trying to create with Canva for users. We started seeing teams inside Canva use AI a lot for prototyping. We thought of externalizing it and giving everyone the ability to code easily and create interactive experiences," Adams said. To be clear, Canva is not the first to do this. Several startups such as Cursor, Lovable and Replit have attracted lots of customers and attention for enabling users to prompt their way to creating applications. Still, Canva has an incentive to bake such a feature into its software, as it complements its broader selling point as a service used to design everything from marketing collateral to website. Canva is also adding new AI features to its photo editor: one tool allows users to point and click to modify artifacts in photos, while another is a background generator that accounts for lighting and layout. This feature set seems aimed at helping the company compete with tools like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, and Pixelmator (acquired by Apple last year). Last year, Canva launched an enterprise-focused product to better serve larger teams with features like single sign-on and access management tools. Now, it's adding spreadsheets to the mix with Canva Sheets. Besides the usual spreadsheet features, Canva Sheets comes with a tool called Magic Insights, which, as it says on the tin, surfaces insights gleaned from data on the sheet. There's also a feature called Magic Charts, which converts raw numbers into charts automatically, complete with brand-specific graphics and logos. The company said Canva Sheets supports integrations with HubSpot, Statista, Google Analytics and more to let users import data easily. Companies like Adobe, Canva and Pixlr may be looking to add more value to their offerings, but the fact remains that bringing AI into design tools is causing some tension. Artists are worried not just about their work being used to train AI models without permission, there's also a real threat to creative design jobs. Still, Adams doesn't see this as a clash between AI and creativity; rather, he sees this as a moment of growth and opportunity in the field. "I think all our jobs will change as AI comes, as different tools are integrated across every specialty, whether it be design, product management, engineering, marketing or sales," he said. "I think each job is going to change and adapt to the help they will get from AI tools. We just see a massive opportunity," Adams said. Those changes, it seems, will be here sooner than most expect. Earlier this month, the company laid off some technical writing staff, nine months after its co-founders reportedly asked employees to use AI apps wherever they could. Adams, however, said that these layoffs were not related to AI tools the company is building, but were an effect of restructuring. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at
