Canva has announced a restructuring, and 1,271 people, or 22% of the company, will be impacted. CEO Melanie Perkins herself said so in a note to staff. That figure isn’t all job cuts. Some people will leave, while others will see their roles change or be asked to move to central hubs, and Canva doesn’t give the split.
Canva is folding its Product, Growth and Platform teams into one Product Org, with fewer management layers and broader roles in place of narrow specialties. Sydney will become the primary home for more of its product teams.
Perkins calls this “the hardest moment” in Canva’s 13-year history. Growth has slowed for the first time in a decade, she writes, and “small changes won’t be enough.” She wants to “refound Canva” around small teams that spend “more time building, and less time navigating how work gets done.”
The note doesn’t name AI, saying only that new technology “is transforming what people can create, how they create it, and what they expect from the products they use.” But AI costs did hit Canva’s growth: higher-than-expected costs led it to slow AI rollout and cut expected revenue growth by 1/3, to 20%, Fortune reports.
Perkins told Fortune that Canva has cut the cost per AI task by nearly 90% since launching Canva AI 2.0 in April. Its own models are aimed at the same bill. Brush, its new design-editing model, is up to 69% faster than its previous design agent and 46% cheaper per edit, Canva says. It’s available to Pro subscribers.
Everyone leaving gets at least six months’ salary, statutory entitlements included, and keeps their work MacBook. They can also register interest in $10,000 (about Php 635,000) grants from a new Canva Collective Fund to start a business or community project, and Canva takes no equity.
A company-wide all-hands follows on November 10th, with org-level meetings from November 11th. From January, most hybrid staff will be expected in the office two to three days a week.
