Canva eliminates 1,271 roles amid slower growth and AI spending

Canva cuts 22% of its workforce

Design software company Canva is cutting 1,271 jobs, equal to 22% of its workforce, as its growth slows and AI-related costs rise. Co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins told employees that growth had slowed for the first time in a decade, making the restructuring the company’s hardest year yet.

Perkins said Canva had grown from a pitch-deck idea into a platform used by hundreds of millions of people over 13 years. But she argued that success in its first chapter did not guarantee success in the next, and that the organisation needed to change for a slower-growth environment.

Teams will be combined and roles broadened

Canva is reshaping its organisational chart by combining its product, growth and platform teams. The stated aim is to reduce communication friction across those functions.

The company is also reducing what it calls “subspecialisation”, meaning employees may be asked to assume broader responsibilities. In parallel, Canva is moving toward hybrid work and asking staff to work from an office several days each week.

The changes place the workforce reduction alongside an operating-model overhaul rather than presenting it solely as a headcount measure. For product organisations, the integration of product, growth and platform functions is central to how Canva intends to simplify coordination.

AI costs and competition shape the reset

Canva has been shipping its own AI models to reduce costs and reliance on third-party models. Its product direction includes Canva Craft image generation model as part of the company’s effort to develop proprietary image-generation capabilities, while the wider business is also managing the cost of AI deployment.

Despite those efforts, Canva reduced its revenue-growth forecast to 20% from 30% because of ballooning AI costs. Earlier this year, early investors also cut the company’s valuation to about $35 billion.

Canva faces increasing competition from AI startups and general-purpose chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini, whose image-generation capabilities can help users create posters and presentations. The business implication is that companies investing in AI should assess model costs, forecast assumptions and team structure together when growth conditions change.