New to this? Read it in simple words
- Canva says a shake-up will affect 1,271 people, or 22% of its staff.
- Some will lose their jobs, and others will change roles or move.
- Its chief executive blames slower growth and says small changes won’t be enough.
- Reports say AI rivals and AI costs add to the pressure on the company.
- Restructure
- When a company changes how its teams are organised, often with job cuts.
- Hybrid work
- Working partly in an office and partly from home.
- Valuation
- What investors think a whole company is worth.
Canva is a design app based in Sydney, used for slides, posters and social media posts. It entered 2026 valued at $40 billion, as one of the most watched candidates for a stock market listing, Forbes Australia reports. On Wednesday, co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins sent staff a note and published it on Canva’s website.
What Canva announced
The note says 1,271 people, or 22% of Canva, will be affected. Some will lose their jobs. Others will see their roles change, or be asked to move to central hubs. No report says how many will leave.
Product, growth and platform teams will merge into one product organisation, and management layers will be cut, The Age reports. Sydney will become the main home for more product teams.
Canva was known for remote work. “From January, we expect most Hybrid Canvanauts to spend around 2 to 3 days in the office each week, depending on what makes sense in your area,” Perkins wrote.
From Melanie Perkins’s note to staff. No report says how many of the 1,271 will leave.
Why, in Perkins’s words
“This is without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history,” Perkins wrote.
She said growth had “slowed for the first time in a decade”, and that “small changes won’t be enough”. Canva must “refound” itself around “small, empowered teams”, she wrote.
Capital Brief says she also cited fragmented ownership, too many handovers, and the difficulty of bringing teams in different countries together. “We’re simplifying layers, consolidating overlapping responsibilities, and ensuring teams have the right mix of skills and experience for the chapter ahead,” she wrote.
Where AI comes in
The quoted parts of the note don’t name AI as a cause. But reports place the cuts in a wider worry that AI will take business from design companies. Shares in rival Figma more than halved in 2026 to the end of April, despite strong revenue growth, The Age reports.
AI has also cost Canva money. After it rebuilt its product around AI, it had to delay several launches because of the cost of serving AI to mostly non-paying users, Forbes Australia reports. It also cut its forecast for revenue growth from 30% to 20%, the same report says.
Last month Canva revealed Craft, its first own AI model. Canva says it can serve AI more efficiently with Craft than by relying on models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
Investors have marked Canva down. Its biggest venture backer, Blackbird, cut its valuation by 17% to $34.9 billion in August, The Age reports. A filing by T. Rowe Price implies $30.4 billion, according to Forbes Australia.
What leaving staff get
Canva says people who leave will get at least six months’ salary, 12 months of healthcare where it provides it, and their work MacBooks.
A new fund will also offer grants of up to $10,000 for leaving staff who start a business or a community project, Forbes Australia and AAP report.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.
- 1
- 2Research · November 4, 2026Canva to cut more than 1000 jobs in ‘hardest moment’ of its history The Age
- 3Research · November 4, 2026Mass job cuts as Canva unveils major restructure after ‘hardest year yet’ Forbes Australia
- 4Research · November 4, 2026‘Profoundly difficult’: Canva unveils sweeping job cuts AAP, via Port Macquarie News
- 5
The number and the quotes come from Perkins’s own note. The link to AI comes from the reporters, and no report says how many of the 1,271 people will actually leave.
Canva to cut, change or move 1,271 jobs as growth slows. Silicon AI News, November 4, 2026. https://siliconainews.com/stories/canva-1271-jobs-restructure
Canva’s restructure affects 1,271 people, 22% of staff, as growth slows for the first time in a decade, though not all will leave. How we rate the mood
The mood shows how the news frames the event for the tech and AI world: as an opportunity (6 and above) or as a loss (below 5). It is not our verdict on who is right.