companies

Kaleido AI

Vienna-based visual AI company behind remove.bg, Unscreen, and Designify; acquired by Canva in February 2021.

Kaleido AI GmbH was founded in 2017 in Vienna, Austria, by Benjamin Groessing and David Fankhauser, who had previously collaborated on other tech projects together. The company was completely bootstrapped, financing itself from cash flow without external investors. Kaleido built remove.bg, an automated background-removal tool for images launched in late 2018 that quickly gained over a million downloads, along with Unscreen (video background removal) and Designify (AI-assisted photo/video editing). By 2020 its products were used by more than 100 million people in over 180 countries, serving clients such as The New York Times, Samsung, and Alibaba. On February 22-23, 2021, Canva acquired Kaleido AI for an undisclosed amount, described as one of the largest startup exits in Austrian history. The roughly 25-person Vienna team continued operating semi-independently under Canva, which committed to hiring about 30 more employees locally; the legal entity is now registered as Canva Austria GmbH.

Founded

2017

Headquarters

Vienna, Austria

Sector

applications