Canva gets to $4B in revenue as LLM referral traffic rises

Source: TechCrunch

Creative company Canva ended 2025 on a high note with a 20% increase in monthly active users, growth that was partially propelled by adoption of its AI tools.

Revenue and User Growth

• More than 265 million monthly active users and over 31 million paid users in 2025.
• Annual recurring revenue (ARR) reached $4 billion by year‑end, according to co‑founder and COO Cliff Obrecht (TechCrunch, Web Summit Qatar).
• The B2B segment (companies with > 25 seats) grew 100%, contributing $500 million in ARR.
• North America remains the primary market, but international growth continues.
• To boost paid conversions, Canva introduced lower‑priced subscriptions in countries such as Pakistan, Uruguay, Morocco, and Jamaica.

AI Investments

Canva’s AI initiatives are delivering results, said Obrecht. The company launched a tool that lets users create mini apps and websites using AI last year (TechCrunch). The tool now has more than 10 million monthly active users.

Obrecht described the strategic shift:

“Where we started was… we got the Canva platform, and we’re giving the Canva platform a bunch of AI tools. We’re inverting that now. We’re becoming an AI platform with a bunch of design tools. So you can think of it more like a cursor for design.”

Competitive Landscape

Canva faces competition from Adobe, Freepik, and Apple, which has rolled out a full‑packaged creator suite (TechCrunch) that bundles Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage for $12.99 per month.

LLM Integration and SEO

• Canva is integrating with chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude. By October 2025, users had logged more than 26 million conversations with the Canva app on ChatGPT.

• The platform ranks among the top 10 referred domains from ChatGPT.

• Obrecht highlighted efforts to surface Canva in LLM search results and improve SEO:

  “We drove a lot of early days in Canva through Google, really understood people’s search intent, and delivered them content that they could then go into our product and edit. And so we really see ChatGPT or any of the LLMs top of the funnel acquisition platforms.”

• Traffic from LLM referrals is growing at double‑digit percentages, and resources are being allocated to increase Canva’s presence in chatbots.

Future Plans

• Canva was last valued at $42 billion in a share sale.
• Obrecht told Bloomberg that the company plans to go public in the next “couple of years” (Bloomberg).