Filings lodged with the SEC show Canva invested in Sharon AI during its December 2025 pre-IPO raise alongside the likes of Regal Funds Management and Ellerston Capital.
Canva has emerged as one of the largest participants in Sharon AI’s US$103 million pre-IPO capital raise last December, with recently filed documents showing the design giant’s investment has converted into a US$23 million stake in the US$2.1 billion data centre player.
A filing submitted to the United States’ financial regulator over the weekend shows Canva invested in Sydney-headquartered Sharon AI’s December convertible-note raise, with its investment converting to 406,000 shares in June.
Canva was among the biggest participants in the December funding round. It was behind Australian fund managers Regal Funds Management and Ellerston Capital, as well as Nevada alternative assets manager Digital Alpha. Also participating was Kie Chie Wong, a Malaysian investor who was an early backer of Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue.
Canva’s investment took place two months prior to Canva becoming a tentpole customer of Sharon AI. The neocloud rents capacity from data centres and, using its stock of Nvidia and AMD processors, sells compute for AI training and inference. Sharon AI has previously described Canva as among its “first major” customers.
Convertible notes allow companies to borrow money from investors, with the debt able to convert into shares at a later date. The notes Canva purchased converted at US$12.53 a share. With Sharon AI’s stock price now hovering around US$59, Canva and its peer investors have made some handsome paper gains thus far.
Sharon AI and Canva declined to comment.
The Australian Financial Review first reported Canva’s shareholding in Sharon AI. But documents filed over the weekend specify how Canva acquired its stake, which amounts to just over 1 per cent of the company.
Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht said last week that the company had doubled down on internal AI model development after its reliance on frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic led to cost blowouts that necessitated product delays.
Sharon AI’s December convertible note issuance was only the beginning of a marathon spree of capital raising for Sharon AI. The neocloud has raised an additional US$2.15 billion since, mostly through a US$1.6 billion round in June. Its float on the Nasdaq in February also raised US$125 million. Sharon AI says it has plans to dual list on the ASX sometime this year.
Signifying the spending bonanza that has accompanied the AI boom, Sharon AI has signed contracts with a combined value of US$8.8 billion. The value of those deals is typically extended over five or six years. The company is very much in the early stages of realising its value: Revenue in the three months to June 30 was just US$1.9 million.
More financing may come soon. Sharon AI’s weekend filing highlighted US$2 billion-plus in contracts with Indian cloud provider ESDS and an unnamed tech company that will require Sharon AI to spend around US$1.2 billion on the GPUs and equipment to fulfil its obligations.
The company said in its filings that it expects to finance between 70 and 80 per cent of this expenditure via debt, but it has not yet finalised agreements.
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