Canva Restructures Around AI, Affecting 1,271 Jobs

Canva is reorganising its business in a move affecting 1,271 employees — about 22% of its global workforce — co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins announced on November 4. The design platform cited slowing growth and the rise of AI tools as the forces behind the overhaul.

Perkins described the decision as the hardest moment in Canva's 13-year history.

Not everyone affected will lose their job. The restructuring splits impacted staff into three groups: some will move into new roles, others may be asked to relocate, and some will choose to leave. For a company that has spent over a decade building a reputation as one of tech's friendlier employers, the distinction matters.

What does this mean for departing employees?

Canva is offering what stands out, even by big-tech layoff standards, as a generous exit package. Departing staff receive:

• at least six months of pay
• the option to keep their MacBooks
• one year of LinkedIn Premium
• career support
• grants of $10,000

For a mid-level designer on a typical Australian or US salary, six months of pay alone can represent tens of thousands of dollars in runway — enough, in practical terms, to cover a full job search without pressure to take the first offer. The $10,000 grant sits on top of severance, not in place of it.

How does AI fit into the picture?

The restructuring is not a pure cost-cutting exercise, at least as framed by the company. Canva explicitly tied the changes to adjusting its business to the rise of AI tools — the same technology shift reshaping the broader design and creative-software labour market. As AI-driven design features compress the time needed for routine visual work, platforms built on that work are rethinking which roles they need and where.

Slowing growth compounds the pressure. When expansion stalls, headcount plans written for a faster trajectory get rewritten, and relocations or role conversions replace quiet attrition.

What does this change for design workers elsewhere?

For individual designers and creative-tech professionals, the signal is sector-level rather than company-specific. A 22% workforce-wide reorganisation at one of the world's most widely used design platforms indicates that AI capability is now a criterion in how creative-software employers structure teams, not an optional skill. Workers whose day-to-day output overlaps most with what AI tools now produce cheaply face the sharpest repricing of their market position; those who direct, edit and integrate that output sit on the safer side of the divide.

The scale of the package also sets a benchmark. Departing Canva staff are leaving with meaningful financial cushioning, which will show up in how quickly that talent re-enters the market — and how little urgency they have to accept discounted offers.

Perkins's framing of the moment as the hardest in Canva's 13-year history suggests the company expects further iteration as AI reshapes its product lines, and design-sector workers should expect more announcements of this kind across the industry in the months ahead.