As AI accelerates product development cycles, the companies best positioned to capitalize are those that have already built a unified data foundation — one capable of taking raw signal and delivering AI personalization experiences at scale.

That shift is playing out at one of Australia’s most celebrated technology companies. Canva Pty Ltd., the design platform that has grown to 265 million monthly active users and $4 billion in annualized revenue, has restructured how it uses data across every product, marketing and sales function. The transformation is accelerating under AI, according to Helen Crossley (pictured, right), global head of data science at Canva.

“It feels like there is a new product coming out every time you turn around,” she said. “Every meeting that we’re having, every product showcase starts with the metrics. What’s happening this week today on our data, and what our customers are seeing and feeling.”

Crossley and Glenn McPherson (left), regional vice president, Australia, at Snowflake Inc., spoke with theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and Rebecca Knight at Snowflake Summit 2026, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Canva’s data strategy and its Snowflake partnership enable AI personalization at scale as Australia’s AI market transitions from experimentation to board-level execution. (* Disclosure below.)

Data strategy powers AI personalization from segmentation to memory

The Canva-Snowflake partnership began modestly, with an initial focus on addressing basic data fragmentation in straightforward and reliable ways. Over the years, Canva has extended the data foundation well beyond secure storage and into higher-value applications such as AI personalization, all while maintaining robust governance and security.

“We started out with Canva in very humble ways, trying to solve the simplest of problems, which was that data fragmentation,” McPherson said. “We built a reputation over that time of being very dependable, very simple.”

Snowflake’s expanding portfolio of AI services is enabling Canva to run three distinct jobs on a single data foundation: segment its global user base, score and prioritize enterprise customers for sales and partnerships teams and deliver personalized messaging in the moment. Canva brings together product, marketing and sales signals in one Snowflake environment and uses them to match every user with the right message at the right point in their journey, Crossley noted.

“As everyone comes into our platform, we need to know who are they [and] what’s the job that they want to get done?” Crossley said. “How do we use Snowflake and all of the data and the signal that we have to be able to really make that message feel personalized to that customer, in that moment, with the job that they’re really trying to get done?”

The partnership between the two companies has turned reciprocal: Snowflake uses Canva for design across its teams, while Canva relies on Snowflake’s data infrastructure. In the broader Australian market, about 70% of enterprises have now moved from AI pilot to production, McPherson noted, with the common factor among those succeeding being a business-led — rather than an information technology-led — approach, often driven by board-level directives.

“Find your AI heroes in the organization,” Crossley said. “They might not have knocked on your door yet as an executive, but you absolutely have to invite them in, find them in your organization and really listen to them in terms of what that future could look like, because they’re motivated, [and] they know what they’re doing.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Snowflake Summit 2026:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Snowflake Summit event. Neither Snowflake, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE