Australian design software firm Canva is restructuring operations across its business, affecting 1,271 employees or 22 per cent of its workforce through layoffs, role changes and relocations.
The reorganization hits the company after its first expansion slowdown in a decade, co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins said in a message to staff published on Canva’s website in November 2026.
Perkins founded the 13-year-old company alongside her husband, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams as Canva scaled to more than 265 million monthly active users.
Severance Packages and Management Trims
Employees losing their positions will receive six months of salary alongside 12 months of extended health insurance coverage and career counseling services. Co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins informed staff through an internal memo that the reorganization follows months of evaluation regarding technological shifts and internal bureaucracy.
Leadership plans to eliminate subspecialization, strip out middle-management tiers and consolidate divided functional teams into shared physical workspaces. The business aims to shift developer hours back toward building software rather than managing organizational processes.
“This is without a doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history,” said Perkins, who founded Canva with her husband, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams. “Success in our first chapter doesn’t guarantee success in the next.”
Shifting Strategy in Creative Software
Canva expanded aggressively over the past decade by targeting non-professional creators, social media marketing teams and small retail operators who found legacy graphic design suites too complex or expensive. The resulting momentum attracted millions of corporate teams across the Asia-Pacific region, driving competition directly against enterprise stalwarts.
Consolidating teams back into physical offices while flattening reporting lines exposes operational friction inside software enterprises that expanded rapidly during periods of low interest rates. Software providers in the region now face corporate customers tightening discretionary software budgets while demanding automated design workflows.
Valuation Milestones and Leadership Wealth
Investors valued the privately held Australian platform at $42 billion in August 2025. The platform maintains an active audience exceeding 265 million monthly active users globally across enterprise accounts, schools and self-employed creators.
Perkins and Obrecht hold an estimated personal net worth of $15 billion, ranking them among Australia’s wealthiest business figures. Co-founder and chief product officer Cameron Adams holds an estimated net worth of $3.8 billion.
Operational Targets Ahead
Canva management will focus execution on realigning product teams into smaller units while completing the planned departmental transfers across its international offices. Enterprise client retention rates and upcoming user counts will test whether these internal consolidations stabilize Canva’s operating margins as growth moderates.
