Canva cuts or reshapes 22% of its jobs without naming AI, but the restructure looks AI-driven

Canva has announced a restructure affecting 1,271 jobs, or 22% of its global workforce. CEO and co-founder Melanie Perkins told staff in a company-wide note. The figure combines three groups: people losing their jobs, people whose roles are changing and people being relocated. The company has not said how many fall into each. Perkins called it the hardest moment in Canva's 13-year history.

The official reason is that growth has slowed for the first time in a decade. Perkins said small adjustments would not be enough and that she wants to “re-found” the company around small, empowered teams. The note also mentions “new technology” changing how people create and use products, but it never mentions artificial intelligence. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the restructure is meant to position Canva to build AI-related products. Sydney will become the main base for more product teams. From January, most hybrid staff will be expected in the office two to three days a week.

The severance package is above average. It includes at least six months' salary, a year of healthcare coverage and the removal of the one-year vesting cliff for some recent hires. A vesting cliff is the waiting period before an employee receives any shares, so removing it means new hires don't leave with nothing. There is also a fund offering US$10,000 grants to departing staff who want to start a business or run a community project.

The context explains what the note leaves out. AI tools can now generate images, layouts and slides from a short text prompt, which is exactly the space Canva was built to own. According to SmartCompany, Canva became the world's second most-visited AI platform in August, ahead of Claude, Grok and Gemini. In the same month, the same outlet reported a further $11 billion drop in its valuation. In 2025, Canva had already cut 10 to 12 technical writers in a move reports linked to its push for generative AI. In Australia, Atlassian cut 1,600 jobs in March 2026 and said openly that AI would let it reduce headcount. Globally, one tracker counted 245,953 people laid off across 783 tech companies in 2025.

Our thesis: not naming AI doesn't make the cuts any less AI-driven. It's a communication choice. Canva is caught between two forces. AI erodes the value of its core product by making simple design nearly free. At the same time, it forces the company to reorganize to compete in that new market. The result fits the pattern we have described across sectors: the organization gets flatter, roles are merged and investment shifts toward building AI. This isn't “AI took the jobs”. It's AI changing which work matters inside a company. Canva once promised that anyone could design anything, and now that same idea applies to Canva itself.

Our reading: the short-term cost is real and falls on 1,271 people, and we won't downplay that. Even so, the way it's handled matters. Six months' pay, healthcare and seed money for new projects set a higher standard than the sector usually offers, and other companies should follow it. In the long run, cheaper creative tools mean more people can make things. The challenge for this transition is to make sure the people who built those tools aren't the ones who pay for that gain.