Canva lays off and relocates 1,271 people, or 22 percent of its workforce

The maker of the design tool is cutting jobs after its first slowdown in growth in a decade. The company's chief admits that supporting AI features was too expensive, and pricing was not keeping up with demand.

Canva, the Australian maker of an online tool for designing graphics and presentations, announced on Wednesday, November 4, changes affecting 1,271 people, or 22 percent of employees. Some of them will lose their jobs, while others will change roles or be relocated to the company's main operating hubs. According to TechCrunch (opens in a new tab), Sydney is to become the main center for product teams.

Melanie Perkins, Canva's co-founder and chief executive, wrote to employees that this is the toughest moment in the company's 13-year history, and that growth has slowed for the first time in a decade. In August, the company cut its revenue growth forecast from 30 to 20 percent. Perkins indicated that the average cost of handling a single AI task was too high, and that pricing and usage control mechanisms were not keeping pace with demand for these features. Canva is developing its own AI models to depend less on external providers. It also faces competition from ChatGPT and Gemini, where a poster or presentation can be created without a separate design tool.

Canva's early investors, Blackbird and AirTree, lowered the company's valuation this year to about $35 billion from $42 billion in 2025. The company has been profitable since 2017, and in 2025 it had $3.5 billion in revenue. Media reports indicate that its plans for a stock market debut may now be in doubt.

Canva will merge its product, growth and platform teams and reduce narrow specialization, so employees will be given a broader scope of responsibilities. From January 2027, most people working in a hybrid model are expected to spend two to three days a week in the office. Those being laid off will receive at least six months of pay, 12 months of health care where the company provides it, $10,000 to start their own start-up, and they will keep their work laptop.

Before the cuts, Canva employed 5,700-5,800 people in 37 countries, according to media reports. In May, the company itself said it had more than 5,300 employees.

Canva is one of many companies that have recently announced cuts. pulsHR.pl (opens in a new tab) also lists Netflix, Disney and Barclays. Canva's example shows that the cost of maintaining AI affects employment also in companies that build their product around AI.