The importance of the Apps Marketplace to Magic Studio

When Canva launched ten years ago, the proliferation of the internet and smartphones made it possible for us to reimagine the future of design. Since then, we’ve brought the power of visual communication to 150 million people all over the world in hundreds of languages and on all kinds of devices. But just as we were a decade ago, we're once again standing in front of another major shift in technology — this time, fuelled by artificial intelligence.

As teams grapple with the need to do more with less, it’s difficult to make the most of the many new AI tools that are either geared towards professional designers, only do one specific thing, or are scattered across different complex platforms. That’s why this week, we unveiled the future of Canva with our most game-changing launch ever: Magic Studio.

Our users include individuals, teams, large organizations, and everything between. With Magic Studio, users no longer need to toggle between multiple AI tools or learn lots of different software — all the best of AI is at their fingertips. It’s the only truly all-in-one and interoperable AI offering, bolstered by the array of AI capabilities available in our Apps Marketplace — thanks to our Canva Developers Community.

The Apps Marketplace is a key part of Magic Studio

As AI evolves, our users will always be able to find the best technology on the market through our ever-growing Apps Marketplace and the Canva Developers program. They can power up their creative process with the best AI-powered design and productivity tools on the market, all in one place. In fact, we now have 19 AI-powered apps live on the Apps Marketplace — and the data shows us that users are loving these new features. Since the launch of Magic Studio we’ve seen the AI apps developed by our community used more than 100K times per day. These apps include:

• AI image generators like Google Cloud’s Imagen, OpenAI’s Dall-E, Mojo AI, Hello QArt, and more.
• Avatar generators by the likes of D-ID, HeyGen, Neiro, DeepReel, and Krikey. They’ll help you create engaging video content in multiple languages in seconds.
• Voiceover generators that let you clone your voice, translate it, and create voiceovers for your social media, e-learning, video, or presentation content by Murf AI, and AiVOOV.
• Custom music generators like Soundraw and MelodyMuse, that allow your to create the perfect track in seconds.
• And so much more, like productivity tools such as Enhancer, which enhances and upscales blurry images by up to 1000%, or JARA, which streamline the resume creation process for the millions of people who create their resumes in Canva.

The importance of an open marketplace

Some of our new AI products could have features that overlap with apps you're building. In fact, since we launched the Apps Marketplace, our Text to Image app (now renamed Magic Media), has overlapped with image generators by our developer community. But this is ok! We have 150M monthly users from massively diverse backgrounds doing hundreds of thousands of different jobs using Canva. And because they all have different jobs to do, they all have different needs from their apps — making choice and diversity paramount.

By offering an open marketplace of apps, users can choose the app that's right for them. This also means there's great opportunity for you to build apps that find a niche with millions of users that our native features could not.

With this in mind we wanted to assure you that there will continue to be space for your apps — our goal is to enhance, not hinder, the vibrant developer community we've built together.

Building together

In this fast changing world of AI, we firmly believe in the principle that a rising tide lifts all boats. The best version of the Canva Apps Marketplace and Canva Developers program is one that we build together. With that in mind, here are a few ways we plan to facilitate this collaboration:

• Deeper integration with Canva: We are dedicated to ensuring seamless integration between your AI and the Canva design platform. Our team is actively working to provide new APIs that allow you to integrate your products with more Canva functions and workflows, allowing you to create even more impactful and useful AI solutions.
• Transparency and open communication: We encourage an open dialog where you can share your concerns, suggestions, and expectations. Your feedback is invaluable and will shape the way we refine our offerings to best serve you. Join the community and become part of the conversation.
• More support: Over the coming months we’ll be launching new educational resources, tutorials, and documentation specifically aimed at supporting you to build and launch the best version of your AI products as quickly as possible.
• The Canva Developers Innovation Fund: We’ve also just announced how you can start to access the $50M Innovation Fund to help you launch your apps faster, and with minimal friction for users. This is an extremely exciting time. As we build this marketplace together, don’t forget to explore the rest of Magic Studio — both our native features, and those on the Apps Marketplace — and share your experiences with our community. They might just inspire your next big idea, or you theirs.

Thank you for being a part of this incredible journey to empower the world to design. As we’re fond of saying at Canva — we’re only 1% of the way there.

Get started building you AI app on Canva with the getting started guide.