Creativity in the Age of AI | NYSE, Canva & Anthropic | RAISE Summit 2026

Canva's Growth and Core Strategy

• Launched 12 years ago with the mission to empower the world to design by addressing the lack of design training and tool access.
• Currently serves 265 million monthly active users globally.
• Prioritizes high localization and personalization to address user nuances across diverse regions, including South America, South Africa, and Western Europe.
• Views AI as an accelerant for the existing mission rather than a new paradigm, focusing on helping users achieve visual results faster.
• Built its own foundational design model specifically to compose full Canva designs (incorporating brand assets and colors) that users can edit directly within the familiar editor, rather than generating standalone images or HTML.
• Launched a partnership with Anthropic to create an MCP connector for Affinity Pro tools, enabling agents to automate complex tasks like layer renaming in seconds.
• Adopted a "workforce amplification" strategy for its 5,000 employees, replacing replacement narratives with a focus on scaling employee efficiency.
• Recently instituted a company-wide week-long "global hackathon" where employees paused normal duties to exclusively experiment with AI integration.

Anthropic's Positioning and European Market

• Founded in 2021 by seven ex-staff from another AI lab with a DNA of prioritizing safety, evidenced by establishing a safety team before a product team.
• Maintains a strict B2B/enterprise focus, tailoring solutions for regulated industries while acknowledging consumer adoption.
• European market adoption of AI is accelerating rapidly; of the top 20 global AI usage countries, 10 are European (up from 4 six months ago).
• Enterprise clients in Europe seek partners with aligned values, specifically regarding data trust and regulatory compliance.
• Major European adopters include Crédit Agricole (French bank), using Claude for software development, knowledge work, financial crimes, and cybersecurity.
• Diverse adoption examples range from legacy banking to "AI-native" startups like Dust (Paris-based agent developers) and internal tools like Spotify's "Honk" for mobile engineering interactions.
• Rejects advertising within Claude to ensure incentives remain aligned with user utility rather than attention or traffic generation.
• Defines the AI role as helping users "think further" rather than replacing human cognition.

The Trajectory of Agentic AI

• 2025: Characterized by chat-based interaction (ask a question, get an answer).
• 2026: Shifts toward AI performing work for teams and entering the agentic zone.
• 2027: Anticipated milestone where AI surpasses the capabilities of the best human experts, potentially compressing decades of progress (e.g., drug discovery) into 5–10 years.
• Canva is evolving into an agentic platform where value derives from connectivity between tools (e.g., ingesting data from Claude to generate specific designs).
• Marketing and sales organizations are prioritizing "scaled design" to customize collateral (partnership decks, sales decks) for every client without linear headcount increases.

Future Outlook and Connectivity

• Both executives emphasize the increasing criticality of ecosystem connectivity and "context" as the primary drivers for advanced AI utility.
• Canva plans to expand AI-powered design connectivity to other verticals, including ProMotion Graphics and Flourish (ProData graphics), by year-end.
• Forecasts a significant leap in AI-powered design quality and order by the end of the current year compared to the start.
• Anthropic is actively building the ecosystem and connectors necessary for companies to effectively adopt and integrate these advanced AI capabilities.