Canva's 22% restructure names new technology, and the public hears AI

Canva's restructure will affect about 1,271 people, roughly 22% of its workforce, according to a Wednesday memo from CEO and co-founder Melanie Perkins. Forbes Australia reports that the figure covers people whose roles will be cut, changed or relocated, so it counts more than layoffs. The Week describes it as the first mass layoff in the company's 13-year history.

The memo is direct about the business. “Our growth has slowed for the first time in a decade,” Perkins wrote, and “small changes won't be enough.” Forbes Australia and People Matters both report that Canva cut its 2026 revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20%. Forbes Australia adds that the company entered the year valued at US$40 billion, and that T. Rowe Price marked its Canva shares down 20%.

“This is without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history.”

Melanie Perkins, CEO and co-founder of Canva, in her memo to staff

For about 1,271 people and their families, that sentence opens a difficult conversation at home this week, and any lesson a leader draws from this restructure starts with them.

The memo's one sentence on technology

On technology, the memo says: “New technology is transforming what people can create, how they create it, and what they expect from the products they use.” The Week notes that the memo refers to “new technology” and does not name AI. Forbes Australia and People Matters both report that Canva has not attributed the cuts to AI adoption.

That is the documented record, and any serious account of this restructure begins from what the company itself has said in public.

Readers fill in the word AI for traceable reasons

People Matters reports that Canva faces competition from AI-powered design and image tools, and that the company has launched Canva 2.0 along with Craft, its first foundation model. Co-founder Cliff Obrecht said offering Craft to third-party developers could be another revenue opportunity. Forbes Australia reports that Canva delayed some product rollouts because serving AI to mostly non-paying users was costly. Set those facts beside the phrase “new technology” and a slowing growth rate, and most readers will draw the line themselves.

The calendar adds to it. Forbes Australia places the memo in a year that included 1,600 cuts at Atlassian in February and 4,000 at Block in April, and the memo arrived the week after Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees. I have written about what a 60,000-person buyout offer means for who leaves and about the week Barclays and Amex job cuts landed together. When announcements cluster, the public reads them as one story with one cause.

I understand the instinct, and I would still work from the company's own statements, because a leader who cites this restructure as an AI layoff is making a claim that Canva itself has not made.

How Canva built the restructure

The design of the change tells you more than the headline number. Forbes Australia reports that product, growth and platform teams will merge into one “mega product organisation,” with fewer organizational layers. Sydney becomes the key product center, and some roles will relocate there from Canva's 37 global teams. From January 2027, hybrid staff will be expected in the office 2 to 3 days a week, reversing the company's earlier remote-first approach, according to Forbes Australia and People Matters. Perkins described the effort as a way to “refound Canva.”

The layer reduction and the location reset are the 2 decisions I would study most closely. Fewer layers change how many people sit between a customer problem and a decision. Making Sydney the key product center changes who sits near that decision. Both reshape the daily work of the people who stay, and those people carry the company forward.

The departure package sets a reference point

People Matters and Forbes Australia report that departing employees receive at least 6 months' salary regardless of location, including statutory entitlements, and 12 months of continued healthcare where Canva provides it. People who joined in the past year have their 1-year vesting cliff removed. Departing staff get career coaching, interview preparation and 1 year of LinkedIn Premium, and they keep their company MacBooks. A Canva Collective Fund will make grants of up to US$10,000 to people starting a venture, with no equity sought, and there is an opt-in alumni talent directory. An all-hands is set for November 10.

The vesting change is the detail I would put in front of any HR team planning a restructure. A 1-year cliff means equity vests only after 12 months, so removing it gives last year's hires a share of what they joined for.

What I would take into my own planning

Say the cause in plain terms inside the company, as Perkins did by naming slowing growth in her memo, which gives employees something concrete to reason with while they work out what the change means for them. If your restructure is about cost, say cost. If AI is changing specific work, name the work and the change. Whatever stays vague internally, the public will fill in.

Decide which roles change before you announce, because Canva's announcement already distinguishes between roles that will be cut, changed or relocated. The person reading a memo wants to know which group they are in on day 1, and a leadership team that has not decided cannot tell them.

Measure what AI is doing in the work before you credit it with results. That means knowing which tasks it handles today and who checks its output once the team is smaller. Without that measurement, any claim that AI drove a restructure is a guess, and the AI job loss statistics people quote inherit the same weakness.

A merged product organization with fewer layers asks people to cover broader work, and that shortens the half-life of skills for everyone who stays. In my forthcoming book, The Great Relearning, I call deferred retraining the learning debt, and a restructure is when that debt comes due.

If you had to announce a restructure next month, could you state the cause in a single sentence and tell each person which group they are in? Take that question into your next leadership meeting. I'm easy to find.

Here is what makes Alex a credible voice on this topic: As former Managing Director of Innovation Strategy and Head of Global Innovation Centers at Cisco, Alex shaped a $1.1B innovation portfolio.

If you are planning a restructure and want a second read on how you will explain it to your people, let's talk →