Canva, the online design platform now based in Delaware ahead of a possible IPO as soon as late 2025 or 2027, has filed delayed Australian accounts for 2023 and 2024 that give a rare look inside its finances. The company, last valued at about $US42bn, has grown from a fast‑rising Australian tech success into a global software heavyweight, shifting its corporate base to the US while keeping a large operational footprint and new headquarters under construction in Sydney.
Those filings show revenue climbing quickly, from around $US962m in 2022 to $US1.44bn in 2023 and roughly $US2.1bn in 2024, more than doubling in just two years. Over the same three-year stretch, Canva booked total losses of about $US692m, even as it pointed to healthier operating cash flow, which rose from about $US133m in 2023 to roughly $US263m in 2024. The company attributes that cash performance to a scalable subscription model, tighter investment discipline and the benefit of running a global platform.
A big part of the spend is people and growth. In 2024, total expenses reached about $US2.27bn, including roughly $US848m in employee costs and around $US270m in sales and marketing. A large slice of that is non‑cash share-based compensation used to attract and retain staff, with stock-related expenses of about $US356m in 2024, $US282m in 2023 and $US194m in 2022. Senior executives collectively received about $US10.2m in 2024, up from $US9.7m a year earlier, while global headcount rose to around 5000 people after hiring more than 400 staff in Australia alone.
At the same time, Canva is leaning heavily into artificial intelligence. It paid roughly $370m in 2024 for Leonardo.ai, a Sydney-based visual AI business with more than 120 technical staff and its own foundational model, which Canva sees as the backbone of an in‑house AI research lab. That unit has reportedly been burning through about $50m a year and undergoing restructuring, which signals that the shift into advanced generative video and image tools is expensive and not yet self-funding.
Despite the accounting losses, Canva emphasises that it has been profitable on a free cash flow basis for several years. It ended 2025 with more than $US4bn in annualised revenue growing at above 40% and holding around $US699m in cash and equivalents as at December 31 2024. The user base looks strong too, with monthly active users climbing from roughly 170 million to more than 220 million during 2024, with over 30 billion designs created in total and millions more produced every day. The company also claims uptake by over 95% of large global enterprises, which puts it among the most widely used software tools worldwide.
In the broader tech landscape, Canva’s private valuation appears to outpace that of other major Australian-born software groups, with one prominent listed peer now sitting at a market value of about $US17.2bn after its share price more than halved since early 2024. That gap suggests investors see Canva as one of the standout global growth stories in software, but it also raises the stakes ahead of an eventual IPO, especially if high losses, heavy stock compensation and AI bets continue to weigh on reported earnings.
