Australian online design unicorn Canva acquires data visualisation platform Flourish

Australian online design platform unicorn Canva announced that it has acquired Flourish, a UK-based data visualisation platform, for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition comes as Canva marks the milestone of more than 75 million monthly active users, an increase of more than 30 million in the last 12 months as teams of every size seek out powerful, affordable and collaborative platforms to bolster visual communication.

Founded in 2016 by Duncan Clark and Robin Houston, Flourish was created with the mission of empowering everyone to tell compelling and engaging stories with data. Today, its leading data visualisation platform is used by more than 800,000 people around the world.

Organizations ranging from the BBC and Sky to Deloitte and Moody’s, rely on Flourish’s platform to create data visualisations that bring more eyes and understanding to their stories. More than 9.5 million visualizations have been created with Flourish, attracting over 20 billion views to date, according to the announcement.

“Data storytelling has emerged as an increasingly critical part of visual communication for teams across almost every industry,” explains Canva co-founder and CEO, Melanie Perkins. “Welcoming Flourish to Canva marks the latest step in our mission to empower the world to design. We’re incredibly excited to welcome their talented team as we work together to combine their world-leading data visualization technology with the Canva magic our community know and love.”

As the volume of data being shared and communicated in today’s world continues to grow, the need for data storytelling is becoming increasingly universal across almost every team and industry. More than 500 million presentations and over 150 million infographics have been created with Canva as millions of people seek out simple, affordable and collaborative tools to communicate information and ideas in engaging, interactive and digestible ways.

Over the coming months, Canva will integrate Flourish’s technology into its core platform, opening up exciting new possibilities for creative data storytelling at scale.

“By joining forces with Canva, we can bring the power of data storytelling to the world’s leading visual communication platform, embraced by millions of people across the globe. We can’t wait to help Canva’s vast community of users bring their data to life while continuing to support the thriving Flourish community,” said Duncan Clark, CEO and co-founder of Flourish.