Canva Cuts 22% of Workforce Amid Growth Slowdown and Rising AI Costs

OPA WIRE, Nov 4 (OPA) — Design software giant Canva is cutting 1,271 employees, amounting to 22% of its total workforce, as the company grapples with a persistent growth slowdown and surging operational costs. The workforce reduction marks a major turning point for the platform, which has expanded rapidly over the past thirteen years to serve hundreds of millions of users globally.

In a note to staff, CEO and co-founder Melanie Perkins acknowledged the severity of the cuts. “Over the past thirteen years, we’ve turned a dream in a pitch deck into a platform used by hundreds of millions of people,” Perkins wrote. “Yet success in our first chapter doesn’t guarantee success in the next. This has been our hardest year yet, and as we shared earlier this year, our growth has slowed for the first time in a decade.”

To navigate the downturn, Canva is overhauling its corporate structure by merging its product, growth, and platform teams to streamline communication and reduce operational friction. The company is also scaling back specialized roles, requiring remaining staff to absorb broader responsibilities, while shifting toward a mandatory hybrid work model that requires office attendance several days a week.

The layoffs follow a downward revision of Canva's revenue growth forecast from 30% down to 20%, driven by ballooning expenses associated with developing proprietary artificial intelligence models. These rising costs prompted early investors to slash the company's valuation to approximately $35 billion earlier this year, as Canva faces mounting competitive pressure from specialized AI startups and versatile general-purpose chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini.