Canva Restructure Hits 1,271 Jobs, or 22% of Staff, as Growth Slows for the First Time in a Decade

Tech
Written by Methodical Millions
Illustration of emerald and navy design tiles drifting away from a tightly regrouped cluster around a glowing hub

The Australian design giant says growth has slowed for the first time in a decade. Its answer is fewer layers, broader roles, and more people in Sydney, with some long-time staff on their way out.

By Methodical Jon | Nov 3, 2026

Canva announced on Tuesday, November 3rd 2026 (ET), that a sweeping reorganization will affect 1,271 employees, roughly 22% of its workforce. In a memo to staff titled "An important update on our team," co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins said some people will see their roles change, some will be asked to relocate, and others will lose their jobs, according to Business Insider, which published the memo in full. Canva is privately held, so there's no ticker to watch.

Perkins called it "without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history," the BBC and The Guardian reported. The company didn't say how many of the 1,271 will actually be let go, as opposed to reassigned or relocated.

What happened

The memo lays out three changes. First, Canva is merging its Product, Growth and Platform groups into a single Product Org. Second, it is "reducing subspecialisation and collapsing layers," folding narrow specialties into broader roles. Third, it is co-locating teams: Sydney will become the "primary home" for more product teams, and from January most hybrid employees are expected in the office about two to three days a week, per the memo and the BBC.

The reason given is blunt. "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," Perkins wrote. "New technology is transforming what people can create, how they create it, and what they expect from the products they use."

The severance package

Canva is going further than most on the way out. Per the memo and The Guardian, departing staff get:

  • At least six months of salary, regardless of location
  • Twelve months of continued healthcare where Canva already provides it
  • Removal of the one-year vesting cliff for people who joined in the past year
  • Career coaching, and they can keep their company laptop
  • The option to apply for a US$10,000 grant from a new "Canva Collective Fund" to start their own venture, with Canva taking no equity

Context: not Canva's first cut, but by far its biggest

The Australian Financial Review describes this as the first redundancy round in Canva's 13-year history. That framing deserves one asterisk. In late March 2025, Canva cut 10 of its 12 technical writers, which the AFR itself called the company's "first known redundancy round," about nine months after its co-founders urged staff to use AI tools wherever possible. Canva said then that it was "empowering engineers to take greater ownership of documentation while incorporating new tools," Information Age reported. Tuesday's restructure is a different scale entirely: company-wide, across teams in 37 countries.

Why it matters

AI is the backdrop, even if Canva won't say it outright. The Guardian notes that, unlike Atlassian, Block and WiseTech, Canva didn't mention AI in its announcement. But the AFR frames the move against "heightened competition" from large AI models, and the BBC reports that Canva's value has dropped over concerns about AI's impact on its business and the cost of building it into its products. A tool that made design easy for non-designers now competes with models that can generate the design from a sentence.

The IPO story just got more complicated. Canva has long been touted as a candidate for a blockbuster Nasdaq listing. The AFR puts its value at about US$31 billion (A$44 billion). Earlier this year, backers Blackbird Ventures and Airtree reportedly marked it down from A$60 billion to about A$49 billion, the BBC reported. Slowing growth and a big reorganization are the kind of things a company usually wants behind it before it lists, not in the prospectus.

What to watch next

Canva has scheduled a company all-hands for November 10th, with org-level meetings from November 11th, and leads are due to share team-by-team changes by the end of this week, according to the memo. Watch for how many of the 1,271 are actual job losses versus relocations, any updated growth or valuation figures, and whether IPO timing moves.

The money lesson

1. Growth covers a lot of sins, until it slows. Layers and subspecialties pile up quietly in fast-growing companies. The moment growth slows, the structure becomes the problem.

2. Your skill set is your real job security. Canva is explicitly shifting to broader roles. Narrow specialists are the most exposed when tools and org charts change.

3. Private valuations move too. Being unlisted doesn't protect a company from markdowns. If you hold private-company equity, treat the last round's price as a guess, not cash.

For the bigger picture on how companies go from private darling to public stock, listen to Episode 31 - IPOs and SPACs. It's the right primer on the listing path Canva has long been tipped to take, and why the timing and the valuation matter so much.

At the time of writing, Canva has not said how many of the 1,271 affected roles will be eliminated outright. This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice.

Sources:

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This article may be AI-assisted and is subject to errors and omissions.

Methodical Millions https://methodicalmillions.com
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