Canva’s decision to restructure, affecting 1,271 people across its global workforce, places the company’s push for a leaner, more centralised operation against the immediate uncertainty facing thousands of employees.

The Australian-founded design platform says the changes will involve job losses, relocations and revised roles, representing 22% of staff. Chief executive Melanie Perkins described the announcement as “without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history,” acknowledging that the company would have to say goodbye to colleagues who helped build it.¹

Canva’s stated rationale centres on reducing organisational layers and bringing more teams together in person. Sydney is set to become the primary base for more product teams, while hybrid employees will be expected to spend two or three days a week in the office from next year.² The company says departing staff will receive at least six months’ pay, extended healthcare where applicable and access to grants for new ventures.¹

The accounts differ mainly in emphasis. One frames the move within a broader technology-sector pattern, as established software companies respond to lower-cost AI rivals and adopt AI tools themselves; it notes that Canva did not explicitly cite AI in its restructuring announcement.¹ The other points to slowing growth, a reported fall in valuation and rising costs of incorporating AI, quoting Perkins’s view that “new technology is transforming what people can create, how they create it, and what they expect from the products they use.”²

Both accounts portray a company trying to adapt to sharper competitive and technological pressures. But for affected workers, the practical outcome remains the same: a choice between changed work, relocation or departure.