Canva has expanded its partnership with OpenAI, gaining broader access to the GPT-6 Astra and GPT-5.6 models as the companies work to make them cheaper to run; they disclosed no pricing, expected savings or exclusivity terms.

The deal fits Canva’s hybrid AI strategy: its Canva Research team builds specialist tools for design tasks, while OpenAI models support broader capabilities such as language, reasoning and code.

The companies have not said which Canva features will use the new models or how they will be routed, and there is no indication Canva’s own models will replace OpenAI’s.

The four-year collaboration began with GPT-3 powering Magic Write, and OpenAI models now also support Canva Code, which turns plain-language requests into interactive designs, websites and apps; Canva is expanding employee access to ChatGPT and Codex.

Canva’s head of AI product, Danny Wu, said an internal test had GPT-6 Astra navigate more than 80 million lines of Canva code and write and analyse over 1,000 queries against the company’s data warehouse.

Canva is among the five most-installed apps in ChatGPT, and OpenAI says the integration has brought millions of people to Canva’s products.

Alongside the partnership, Canva is developing its own design-focused AI: Brush, built by Canva Research, edits existing designs in response to requests, from changing a line of copy to revising a slide deck, and is available to Canva Pro subscribers.

Brush follows Craft, Canva’s image-generation model announced on October 22, 2026, which creates images at 2K resolution in any aspect ratio and is available in Canva and through its public API.

Canva says Brush is up to 69% faster and 46% cheaper per edit than its previous design agent, though the article provides no independent benchmark or testing details.

Canva says its in-house models are part of an effort to control AI costs and meet demand with its own technology, as rising expenses have slowed the rollout of new features.

In August, cofounder and CEO Melanie Perkins said Canva had relied too heavily on frontier models and lowered the company’s revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20%.

Capital Brief reported that 32 finance roles were made redundant in January and cited employee concerns about further cuts or a hiring freeze during another restructure; Canva declined to comment on that speculation.