Canva has bought Melbourne-based advertising technology company Doohly, its third acquisition of 2026, as the design software giant diversifies the business to better position itself for the artificial intelligence boom.

Doohly sells a software platform that runs information and advertising screens in offices and retail outlets, and is used by customers including Mitre 10, Rebel Sport, Mobil, LiquorLand and Darwin International Airport.

The deal was valued at $30 million and first reported by Capital Brief, a windfall for Doohly co-founder Sean Law, who owned over 45 per cent of the company that was founded in 2019, according to regulatory filings.

Tom Hawkins, who co-founded the company alongside Law and is now the chief financial officer, held a 14 per cent stake, with Skalata Ventures and Archangel Ventures owning 17 per cent and 8 per cent respectively.

The deal comes as Canva, last valued at around $60 billion gears up for a major series of product update announcements at its annual conference in Los Angeles next month. As software stocks continue to plunge when new AI platforms launch capabilities deemed to threaten their products, Canva is seeking to re-classify itself as an AI platform, rather than a software firm.

Its acquisitions reveal an attempt to diversify its commercial offerings, since it originally emerged as a disruptor to design software giant Adobe.

In February, it acquired British animation software business Cavalry and marketing algorithm start-up MangoAI, in deals of undisclosed value. It has also bought generative AI design platform Leonardo.AI and British rival Affinity in much bigger deals, and AI marketing firm Magic Brief.

Earlier this month, research by a16z, the American venture capital firm known previously as Andreessen Horowitz, suggested Canva was behind only ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini as the generative AI app with the most unique monthly visits. The report put Canva ahead of China’s Deepseek, Elon Musk’s xAI’s Grok and Anthropic’s Claude.

The Doohly deal closed two weeks ago and the company’s employees are currently in the process of moving across to Canva.

“We’ve helped millions of individuals and teams create content faster, stay on brand, and scale their output with ease. Now, we’re taking it further by powering the entire marketing and content lifecycle, from ideation and creation to deployment, measurement, and optimisation,” Canva said.

“Doohly [have] built a strong platform loved by customers globally, building on our recent acquisitions of MagicBrief and MangoAI.”

Canva is Australia’s most successful start-up, backed by major venture capital firms like Blackbird and Square Peg, and had been expected to list next year, although the company has not confirmed those plans.