Canva to “refound” itself: 1,271 roles cut, moved or reshaped as growth slows
The Sydney design giant is merging teams, thinning management and pulling product work back to Sydney after a year of AI cost pressure.
Canva wants to start again with smaller, more autonomous teams, and about one in five of its people will feel it. Co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins told staff in a memo this week that 1,271 employees, or 22 per cent of the company, will be affected. They will lose their jobs, be asked to relocate or move into different roles. The memo did not break down how many fall into each group. Canva has more than 5,000 employees.
Ms Perkins called it the hardest moment in the company’s 13-year history and said small changes would not be enough. She wrote that growth had slowed for the first time in a decade, and that working across many countries had brought talent but made it harder for the right people to solve complex problems together.
- Product, growth and platform teams will be merged into a single product organisation.
- Management layers will be reduced and specialised roles combined into broader ones.
- Sydney will become the main home for more product teams, with some staff asked to relocate to central hubs.
- From next year, hybrid workers will be expected in the office two to three days a week.
Departing employees will receive at least six months’ pay and 12 months of health cover where it is provided. Forbes Australia reports they will also keep their company laptops.
Pressure has been building for months. In August, the Australian Financial Review reported that Canva’s backers Blackbird and Airtree cut their valuation of the company by 17 per cent, from US$42 billion to US$34.9 billion (about A$49 billion). Canva’s own independent valuation for its employee shares fell to about US$31 billion from US$38.9 billion a year earlier. Both followed Ms Perkins telling investors she was cutting Canva’s revenue growth forecast from 30 per cent to 20 per cent. She said the company slowed the rollout of AI features while it rebuilt systems and reduced costs, and that cost per AI task has since fallen nearly 90 per cent since Canva AI 2.0 launched in April.
The wider concern is that AI is changing what users expect from design tools. Perkins wrote that new technology is transforming what people create and how.
Canva has said it will keep investing in AI, but trade press notes that the leaner structure must now deliver faster decisions and lower costs. Commentators have questioned how the valuation cuts affect the company’s long-discussed IPO plans.
Source: BBC
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