ABEJA vs Canva

Canva has a disclosed valuation of $42B, while ABEJA's valuation is not publicly available, making a direct size comparison difficult. Canva employs 7500 people.

Canva has raised more in total funding at $589M, compared to ABEJA's $50M — a gap of $539M. Combined, the two companies have completed 11 known funding rounds.

Canva leads with an Awaira Score of 95/100, while ABEJA sits at 55/100. That 40-point gap reflects real differences in funding, scale, and traction — it's not a vanity metric.

ABEJA was founded by Shoichiro Aoyama in 2012. Canva was founded by Melanie Perkins in 2013. Visit each company's profile on Awaira for a full founder biography.

ABEJA: ABEJA develops AI platform products for retail operations and manufacturing quality control, applying computer vision to analyse in-store customer behaviour and product performance in retail environments, and deploying visual inspection AI for defect detection in manufacturing production lines. The Tokyo company has built an enterprise software business serving Japanese retailers and manufacturers seeking to apply AI to operational problems without building internal AI engineering teams.\n\nThe company raised approximately $50 million in venture funding from investors including SBI Investment, SMBC Venture Capital, and KDDI Open Advancement Fund. ABEJA serves major Japanese retailers, convenience store chains, and manufacturing companies with AI analytics that derive insights from existing camera infrastructure in stores and factories. The company ABEJA Platform cloud product allows enterprise clients to build, deploy, and manage computer vision AI applications with managed infrastructure that reduces the AI operations burden.\n\nABEJA competes in the Japanese enterprise AI market alongside Retail AI (a Seven-Eleven Japan subsidiary) and international computer vision vendors. Japan large retail and manufacturing sectors, combined with limited English-language AI vendor support and preference for domestic supplier relationships in enterprise procurement, create a favourable environment for domestic AI platform companies with established enterprise relationships. The company participation in Japan government digital transformation initiatives has provided additional channels for deploying AI in public sector and infrastructure applications. Canva: Canva is an Australian graphic design platform founded in 2013 that enables users to create visual content without design experience. The company operates a web and mobile-based design tool offering templates, stock images, fonts, and design elements for creating presentations, social media graphics, documents, and marketing materials. Canva's core technology applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to power design suggestions, background removal, magic write features, and content generation capabilities. The platform serves individual creators, small businesses, and enterprises through freemium and subscription models. As of recent valuations, Canva reached $42 billion in valuation with $589 million in total funding, making it one of Australia's most valuable private technology companies. The company positions itself in the enterprise AI category, integrating AI-powered features to streamline design workflows and democratize professional-quality content creation. Canva competes against Adobe's Creative Cloud suite, Figma for collaborative design, and various specialized design tools. The platform has expanded internationally with millions of users globally and serves multiple industries including education, marketing, and business operations. Canva's growth trajectory reflects strong market demand for accessible design tools, driven by increasing content creation needs across digital channels and remote work adoption. Canva combines accessible design democratization with AI-powered features to address the enterprise content creation market at scale.

ABEJA got there first, launching in 2012 — that's 1 year of extra runway. Canva didn't arrive until 2013. In AI, that kind of head start means more training data, deeper customer relationships, and a bigger talent moat.

ABEJA has about 100-500 employees; Canva has about 7500. A bigger team usually means more revenue or heavier VC backing, but in AI, small teams can build at massive scale.

Yes — they're direct rivals. Both ABEJA and Canva compete in Enterprise AI, targeting many of the same buyers. If you're evaluating one, you should be looking at the other.