Cloud-based visual communication platform Canva has announced the opening of applications for its $50 million 'Developers Innovation Fund', in a bid to offer financial support and incentives to developers. The fund intends to reward developers who share its goal to democratise design and foster a diverse marketplace of free-to-use apps on the platform, the media has reported.


Canva will start distributing the $50 million Innovation Fund in the form of 'App Adoption Awards and Developer Grants'. App Adoption Awards is a one-time cash award for apps that reach adoption milestones, based on the number of monthly users. These are open to all developers who have launched a free public app and meet specific requirements.


"We're thrilled to take this next step in nurturing our developer community and confident that this will make Canva a rewarding home for developers to bring their ideas to life, offering tremendous value to our users in the process," Anwar Haneef, Head of Ecosystem at Canva, said in a statement.


The visual communication app aims to develop the most versatile visual communications platform, integrating all design and AI capabilities onto a single page.


To recall, the company announced a programme in June, and after that thousands of developers joined the Canva Developers Programme and have published 60 new apps using the Canva Apps SDK, which has been collectively used 15 million times, as per the company.


To recall, last month, Canva announced launching a specialised suite of AI tools tailored for classrooms, aiming to aid busy educators with tasks such as lesson planning, content editing, document reformatting, image and text editing, multilingual lesson support, and accessibility checking. Now accessible to Canva's user base of over 50 million in education, the Classroom Magic products from the graphic design platform were designed with both educators and students in mind.


The launch, one of the first at such a large scale for AI-powered educational tools, signals the imminent arrival of the next wave of AI-assisted learning.