Canva Nears $1 Billion Stock Sale for Employees and Investors, Part of Wave of Private Deals

Design software startup Canva is nearing a deal that lets longtime employees and investors at the company sell more than $1 billion in stock to new investors, people familiar with the matter said, less than six months after the private Australian firm arranged a similar, though smaller, transaction.

Canva won’t raise any money for itself in the deal, which values the startup at $26 billion, about the same price at which investors sold shares last year. That would make it one of the largest in a string of deals by high-profile private tech firms lately, including artificial intelligence startup OpenAI and cloud-server provider CoreWeave, as well as Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX. In each case, the companies are not selling new shares but letting existing shareholders and employees cash out. At the same time, the share sales give new investors a chance to buy into the companies.