Canva is cutting 22% of its staff, or 1,271 people, according to TechCrunch, which reported the layoffs on Wednesday, November 4, 2026. TechCrunch said co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins announced the cuts in a note to employees and wrote that the design-software company’s growth has slowed.

What the note says

TechCrunch quotes Perkins as writing that “our growth has slowed for the first time in a decade” and that “this has been our hardest year yet.” She also wrote that “success in our first chapter doesn’t guarantee success in the next,” and that Canva has to change even though it has grown substantially, according to the report. In the same note she described the company’s thirteen-year path from “a dream in a pitch deck into a platform used by hundreds of millions of people.”

Restructuring described in the report

  • Canva is reshuffling its organization chart and merging its product, growth and platform teams to improve communication.
  • It is reducing narrow specialization, so employees may take on broader responsibilities.
  • It is moving toward hybrid work and asking staff to come into an office a few days a week.

Background cited by TechCrunch

TechCrunch reports that Canva cut its revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20%, citing an article by StartupDaily, and that early investors lowered the company’s valuation to about $35 billion earlier this year, citing SmartCompany. The report says rising AI costs led to the forecast cut and that the cut was linked to the valuation reduction. It adds that Canva has been building its own AI models to lower costs and rely less on third-party models, and that it competes with AI startups and general-purpose chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini, whose image generation lets people create posters and presentations.

What the report does not say

TechCrunch’s article does not give Canva’s headcount before the cuts, severance terms, or the timing and regional breakdown of the layoffs, and it cites no filings or other company statements.

Sources and notes

This post is based on TechCrunch’s report by Ivan Mehta, published at 3:59 a.m. PST on November 4, 2026. Lens did not see Perkins’s note itself and found no Canva statement or second report of the cuts in searches run on November 4; the quotations are as TechCrunch reproduced them. The forecast and valuation figures were originally reported by StartupDaily and SmartCompany, which Lens did not read. Lens did not contact Canva.

Image: a modern open-plan office with a lounge area and desks, by Loominade via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC0; cropped. Stand-in photo; it is not Canva’s office and does not show the events described.