Design software maker Canva is cutting 22% of its staff, amounting to 1,271 people, amid a growth slowdown. The company's co-founder and CEO, Melanie Perkins, said in a note to employees that while Canva has scaled so far, it needs to change to address slowing growth.
“This has been our hardest year yet, and as we shared earlier this year, our growth has slowed for the first time in a decade,” Perkins wrote. She called it the hardest moment in the company's 13-year history. The figure covers layoffs, role changes and relocations to central hubs, and Canva has not specified how many staff will lose their jobs outright.
Canva is reshuffling its organizational chart and merging its product, growth and platform teams to reduce communication friction. The company is also reducing management layers and consolidating overlapping responsibilities as it moves away from highly specialised team structures.
The company has been shipping its own AI models to reduce costs and reliance on third-party models, but it still had to cut its revenue growth forecast to 20% from 30% to address ballooning AI costs. This also resulted in Canva's early investors cutting its valuation to about $35 billion earlier this year. Perkins did not attribute the cuts to AI replacing roles.
Departing employees will get at least six months' salary, twelve months of healthcare cover where Canva currently provides it, and twelve months of its employee assistance programme, extended to family members. Conversations with affected employees will be staggered across the 37 countries where Canva has teams, depending on local requirements.
A company-wide meeting is scheduled for November 10, when Canva will provide further details about the restructuring and future plans. Canva joins a run of software restructures in 2026 that includes 1,600 job cuts at Atlassian and job losses at Block and WiseTech Global.
