The design software company Canva is cutting more than a thousand jobs as it restructures around artificial intelligence, in what its chief executive has called the hardest moment in the company’s history.
A total of 1,271 staff — 22% of the company’s workforce — will be affected, chief executive Melanie Perkins told employees in a letter, Hiru News reported on Wednesday evening.
Some of those staff will lose their jobs outright. Others have been told they will be relocated to the company’s central hubs.
“This is the hardest moment we have faced in our 13-year history.”
What is being restructured
The company plans to merge its product, growth and platform teams into a single organisation and to cut layers of management.
The decision was taken against a background of slowing growth. Canva, which is headquartered in Surry Hills in Sydney and valued at US$44 billion, has seen its rate of growth slow for the first time in a decade. The restructuring is reported as a response to the effect artificial intelligence may have on software businesses.
Terms for departing staff
Employees losing their jobs have been told they will receive at least six months’ salary and health insurance benefits, and that they may keep their MacBook computers.
Reading the numbers
The two headline figures are consistent with each other: 1,271 roles at 22% implies a total workforce of roughly 5,800, which is in the range Canva has been reported at in recent years.
They are not, however, a straightforward redundancy count. The filing describes 1,271 people as “affected” by the change, with some losing their jobs and others being relocated — so the number of actual job losses is smaller than 1,271, and the report does not say by how much.
What is not reported
The filing does not break down which teams or locations bear the cuts, or how many of the 1,271 are relocations rather than redundancies. It does not name the “central hubs” staff are being moved to, or say whether any of the roles are in the Asia-Pacific region outside Australia.
It gives no timeline for the restructuring, no figure for the cost of the severance terms, and no detail on what specifically about artificial intelligence prompted the decision — whether competitive pressure on Canva’s products, internal automation of roles, or a shift in investment. No response from staff, unions or investors is reported.
