Canva Restructures 22% of Staff as AI Reshapes Software Work

By Sophie Lindqvist

Canva Inc., the Sydney-based online design and publishing platform, says 1,271 people—22% of its workforce, or just over one in five employees—will lose jobs, change roles or relocate, according to a Wednesday employee note.

Chief Executive Officer Melanie Perkins said in the note on Canva’s website that affected employees would lose jobs, change roles or move to central hubs. Canva did not break down those three outcomes, so 1,271 measures total workforce exposure, not a verified layoff count. The company also disclosed no revised headcount, individual-notification schedule or timetable for each part of the plan.

What does the 22% restructuring cover?

Perkins, who co-founded Canva with Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams, said the company’s growth had slowed for the first time in a decade. She argued that Canva needs a simpler operating model built around small, empowered teams, with fewer niche specializations. A worker in one of those specialties cannot determine from the note whether the function will survive, merge or disappear.

She called the reorganization “the hardest moment in our 13-year history.” She presented smaller teams as necessary, but Canva published no productivity target, revenue forecast or hiring plan against which to test that promise.

Four material details remain absent:

• the redundancy count within the 1,271;
• the roles, teams and locations affected;
• severance and relocation support; and
• a dated implementation schedule.

How does AI change the software labor market?

Perkins wrote: “New technology is transforming what people can create, how they create it, and what they expect from the products they use,” followed by: “I’ve come to the difficult conclusion that small changes won’t be enough.”

The report says artificial intelligence lets people accomplish more without specialist software, while companies use it to operate with fewer workers. Investors have erased billions of dollars from software-company valuations amid concern that Anthropic PBC’s Claude will cannibalize their business, according to Bloomberg.

The report describes widespread job losses in the AI era, yet supplies no sector-wide layoffs total, baseline period, country breakdown or hiring series. That leaves the macroeconomic claim without a measurable sample against which readers can test its scale.

Investors are also asking when, or if, the vast investments associated with AI will produce a financial dividend. Neither those investment totals nor comparable employment data appear in the report, so the evidence establishes a major corporate response and broad investor concern, not a quantified national or global contraction.

What changes for workers, and what cannot be inferred nationally?

Sydney will become the main base for more Canva product teams, and more employees will work face-to-face. From January, most hybrid staff must spend two to three days a week in the office, although Canva did not publish office-by-office detail or an implementation timetable for individual moves.

For affected employees, the immediate market position remains unresolved because the company has not said how it will classify workers under layoffs, role changes and relocations. For hybrid employees, the January policy changes the required work pattern; for workers in narrowed specializations, the note gives no basis to judge whether their skills will be retained or consolidated.

The source provides no Australian hiring, unemployment or occupational-demand series, so the announcement cannot establish a national shortage or surplus in these roles. It also lacks a hiring forecast showing whether Canva will replace departing workers or sustain a smaller permanent workforce.

What does the Australian capital-market context show?

Canva has been preparing for a potential listing, which places its restructuring against a delicate financial balance. Its valuation reached $40 billion in 2021, then fell to roughly $26 billion a year later during a broad technology selloff. Bloomberg said the valuation subsequently rebounded, while the effect of more recent market turbulence remains unclear.

The report gave no listing date, offering size or employment forecast linked to a potential offering. A valuation decline or recovery does not establish the direction of job growth, even for a company described as one of Australia’s most prominent technology businesses.

Last month, Firmus Grid Ltd. scrapped a planned Australian initial public offering of up to $5.5 billion. Bloomberg called the abandoned deal one of the biggest deal flops in recent memory and described Firmus as a rising star of the AI data-center boom. The company-level failure did not itself measure job losses; the report supplied no employment figure.

Nextdc Ltd. shares plummeted in October after the data-center operator considered force majeure options and cut its earnings guidance. The source gave no percentage for the share decline and no job-loss count, so this episode signals financing and operating risk rather than a direct inference about employment.

The next test comes in January, when most hybrid staff are due back two to three days a week and smaller teams must show whether they can sustain growth; until Canva discloses the redundancy split, affected roles and listing timetable, the 22% figure documents disruption rather than final job losses.