Canva cuts 22% of staff amid slowing growth
Original: Canva lays off over 1,200 people amid slowing growth
Why This Matters
Canva's struggles signal that even high-growth SaaS isn't immune to AI cost pressure.
Canva is laying off 1,271 employees—22% of its workforce—as the design platform faces its first growth slowdown in a decade, surging AI costs, and rising competition from AI-native tools.
CEO and co-founder Melanie Perkins announced the cuts in a note to staff, acknowledging that Canva's first decade of success doesn't guarantee the next. 'This has been our hardest year yet,' she wrote, citing growth slowing for the first time in ten years.
Beyond headcount reduction, Canva is restructuring internally: merging its product, growth, and platform teams to cut communication overhead, reducing role specialization so employees carry broader responsibilities, and shifting to hybrid office attendance.
The financial picture is rough. Canva slashed its revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20%, largely because AI infrastructure costs ballooned faster than anticipated. The company has been building proprietary AI models to reduce third-party dependencies, but that hasn't been enough to offset the pressure. Early investors already marked down Canva's valuation to roughly $35 billion earlier this year.
Competition is a compounding factor. AI startups and general-purpose tools like ChatGPT and Gemini now let users generate polished visuals and presentations without touching a dedicated design app—territory Canva has long owned.