Is Canva Going Public? What We Know After Latest Funding Round

For the non-designers of the world, Canva is a handy tool that helps documents look aesthetically appealing. Given the company's recent successful funding round, Canva's reach is expansive enough to incur a hearty enterprise valuation.

Following the private equity investment in Canva's growth and development, will the design platform brand strive for the public market?

According to Crunchbase, Canva brought in $200 million in a private equity funding round led by T. Rowe Price (other investors included Franklin Templeton, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investments, Blackbird, Felicis, and AirTree Ventures).

The venture round is Canva's largest to date, beating the most recent equity round from April worth $71 million led by Dragoneer Investment and others.

Founded in 2013 in Perth, Australia, Canva is still a youngin' in the business world. Its status as a startup doesn't mean it's had a lack of venture success, though. To date, the company has completed its Series E and additional funding rounds.

With $572.6 million in total funding, Canva can now claim a $40 billion enterprise value.

Of the world's most valuable startups, Canva is now in the number five spot. The company trails behind brands like ByteDance (TikTok's parent company), Stripe, SpaceX, and Klarna.

Meanwhile, Canva's trio of co-founders are profiting, too. Melanie Perkins, Cameron Adams, and Cliff Obrecht are among Australia's richest. The co-founders own a 36 percent stake in the company, but have made a commitment to donate the majority of that to charity.

Like Zoom and DocuSign, Canva saw great success during the COVID-19 pandemic. An increase in remote work and a need for updated marketing helped foster Canva's next phase of growth, perhaps at a much faster pace than the company would have otherwise expanded.

Now, Canva serves more than 60 million users across 190 countries. The company is expecting a profitable year, with $1 billion in revenue by the end of 2021.

Many companies that go public do so after getting through their Series E funding rounds. Canva is now past that point, but hasn't signaled any intentions to go public in the U.S. or Australia. If it does eventually decide to go public, Australian and American investors alike are bound to bite. After all, Canva skyrocketed from a $3.2 billion value in 2019 to its now $40 billion value.

Until that potential public pivot, Canva will continue to capitalize on a hybrid of consumers and institutional investors, with a heavy tilt on user revenue from individuals and businesses big and small.

Canva first became profitable in 2017, four years after its founding. Meanwhile, Canva's workforce is growing with a 100 percent increase in personnel in 2021 alone. Given its HR investments, growth and development seem to be top of mind for the Canva team.