Canva to cut 1,271 jobs as growth slows for first time in a decade
The Australian graphic design platform will eliminate approximately 22% of its workforce, restructure its product organization and consolidate more teams in Sydney.
Australian graphic design platform Canva is cutting 1,271 jobs, or approximately 22% of its workforce, after recording its first slowdown in growth in a decade. The restructuring will reshape the company’s organizational structure, team locations and staffing requirements, as it seeks to simplify operations and give employees greater ownership over their work.
The Sydney-based company is the latest technology firm to undertake a major workforce reduction as the sector adjusts to rapid advances in artificial intelligence and changing business needs. The scale of the cuts, however, stands out even in an industry that has increasingly turned to restructuring as companies reassess their operations.
Co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins said the changes would involve more than reducing headcount. Canva is combining its product, growth and platform teams into a single product organization, a move intended to reduce handovers between departments and give teams greater responsibility for their work.
The company is also simplifying management layers and consolidating roles in an effort to improve accountability and speed up decision-making. The restructuring will therefore affect not only how many people Canva employs, but also how the company is organized and how its teams operate.
The changes will also have a geographic dimension. Canva plans to make Sydney the main base for more of its product teams and will ask some employees to relocate. From January, most employees working under hybrid arrangements will be expected to attend the office two to three days a week.
For employees leaving the company, Canva plans to provide grants of $10,000 to support their future endeavors.
Canva’s restructuring comes amid a series of large workforce reductions across the technology sector, where companies are reassessing staffing needs and organizational structures as AI capabilities advance.
In March, enterprise software company Atlassian cut 1,600 jobs as part of a shift toward greater investment in AI and enterprise sales.
Australian software company WiseTech Global announced in February that it planned to eliminate nearly a third of its global workforce as part of a two-year restructuring linked to an AI overhaul. In August, it reduced the planned cuts to approximately 26%.
The latest move at Canva adds to the scale of workforce reductions taking place across the industry. Unlike companies that have explicitly tied layoffs to increased AI investment, Canva has described its restructuring in terms of slower growth, organizational simplification and changing business needs.
