Leonardo.ai is a Sydney-based generative AI platform that lets users create images, illustrations, photorealistic visuals and short-form video from text prompts. The company develops and operates its own foundation models (the Phoenix family) alongside fine-tuned community models, and serves creative professionals, marketers, game studios and hobbyists through a web app and API. Founded in late 2022, it reached more than 19 million registered users and over one billion images generated before being acquired by Australian design unicorn Canva in July 2024. Post-acquisition, Leonardo continues to operate as an independent brand while its models power Canva's Magic Studio generative AI suite.
Leonardo.ai has been acquired
This company is no longer available on our private secondary market.
Company data and valuation marks are estimates and may be incomplete, stale, erroneous, or revised.
Founded
2022
Employees
100–200
Total Funding
$38.5M
2 rounds
Latest Valuation
$0.19B
December 6, 2023
Total raised $38.5M across 2 rounds
Funding data and valuation marks are estimates and may be incomplete, stale, erroneous, or revised.
Last updated 06-25-2026
Latest Round
Type
Series A
Date
December 6, 2023
Amount
$31M
Valuation
—
Lead Investors
| Date | Round | Amount Raised | Valuation | Lead Investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 6, 2023 | Series A | $31M | — | Blackbird Ventures |
| February 2023 | Seed | $7.5M | — | Smash Capital, TIRTA Ventures |
JJ Fiasson
Co-Founder & CEO
Jachin Bhasme
Co-Founder & COO
Chris Gillis
Co-Founder & CFO
Peter Runham
Co-Founder & CTO
Competitor list is illustrative and may be incomplete, stale, or erroneous.
Midjourney
Independent, bootstrapped generative AI image platform widely regarded as the quality benchmark for stylized text-to-image generation; primary head-to-head competitor for Leonardo's creative user base.
Stability AI (Stable Diffusion)
UK-based developer of the open-source Stable Diffusion model family that underpins much of the open generative-image ecosystem; competes on customization and self-hosting.
OpenAI (DALL-E / GPT Image)
Operator of the DALL-E and GPT-native image-generation models, distributed via ChatGPT and the OpenAI API; competes on prompt-following quality and broad consumer reach.
Runway
New York-based generative media company best known for its Gen-series video models; overlaps with Leonardo on video and image creative workflows for professional users.
Adobe Firefly
Adobe's commercially-safe generative AI image and video model family embedded across Creative Cloud; competes for the professional designer and enterprise segment.
Black Forest Labs (FLUX)
German lab founded by former Stable Diffusion researchers, producing the FLUX family of open and commercial image models widely used as a Stable Diffusion successor.
Access live market data
Sign UpData collected with AI, which can make mistakes. Please double-check this information.