Canva, the Australian design software giant, has announced the biggest restructuring in its 12-year history, with plans to eliminate or relocate more than 1,200 jobs. The move affects nearly a quarter of its global workforce and includes employees who played an important role in building the platform into one of the world’s most widely used design tools.
The restructuring highlights a growing challenge for traditional software companies: as artificial intelligence becomes more capable, businesses are being forced to reconsider how their products are developed, delivered and monetised.
Canva says the changes are intended to simplify its organisational structure, reduce management layers and bring more teams together through in-person collaboration. However, the scale of the cuts suggests that the company is preparing for a significant shift in how it operates as AI reshapes the creative software market.
The company has also outlined a substantial support package for departing employees. Those affected will receive six months of salary, 12 months of healthcare coverage and career assistance. Canva is also offering financial support to employees interested in launching their own businesses. In a gesture that has attracted attention, departing staff will be allowed to keep their company-issued MacBooks.
In an update to employees, Canva co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins acknowledged the difficulties facing the business, admitting that its growth had slowed for the first time in a decade.
“Success in our first chapter doesn’t guarantee success in the next,” Perkins wrote, describing the current period as the company’s hardest year yet.
Her comments reflect the pressure facing technology businesses that once benefited from rapid expansion but are now confronting changing customer expectations and increasingly powerful AI competitors.
The development also exposes an irony within the creative technology industry. Companies such as Canva and Adobe have invested heavily in artificial intelligence, introducing tools designed to automate image generation, editing and graphic design. Yet, the same technology is increasingly threatening the traditional software business models that helped these companies become successful.
For years, professional designers relied on specialised applications to create illustrations, marketing materials, presentations and branding assets. However, generative AI has made it possible for businesses and individuals to produce many basic designs using simple text instructions.
As a result, some companies are increasingly choosing automated alternatives over hiring professional creatives. While AI-generated designs often struggle with originality, consistency and quality, they can be considerably cheaper and faster to produce.
This shift has raised concerns about the future of established software platforms, particularly as AI systems become capable of performing tasks that previously required multiple specialised applications.
The trend has even fuelled discussions about a potential “SaaS-pocalypse”, a term describing the possibility that advanced AI tools could make traditional software-as-a-service products less necessary.
Recent developments have offered an early glimpse of that possibility. Open-source projects are already attempting to recreate alternatives to expensive creative software, including applications resembling Adobe’s popular design tools. Although these early alternatives still have significant limitations, improvements in AI-assisted coding could make software development more accessible and accelerate competition.
Adobe, another major player in the creative software market, is also facing growing investor concerns. Despite expanding its AI capabilities across its products, the company’s stock has experienced substantial declines. Its shares have fallen approximately 25% over the past year and more than 60% over five years, reflecting wider questions about its growth prospects and the competitive pressures facing established software businesses.
The uncertainty extends beyond creative applications. Even major AI developers, including OpenAI and Anthropic, face questions about whether their expensive technologies can generate sustainable profits. Competition from Chinese companies offering increasingly capable AI systems at lower prices adds another challenge to an already crowded market.
For some professional artists and designers who have criticised the growing use of generative AI, Canva’s restructuring may appear particularly ironic. Companies that helped accelerate AI adoption are now discovering that the technology can disrupt their own businesses just as easily as it disrupts traditional creative professions.
However, Canva’s position in the industry is more complicated than that of a company simply replacing human creativity with automation.
Its acquisition of Affinity has given it access to a popular collection of professional creative applications that provide an alternative to Adobe’s expensive software subscriptions. The Affinity suite has become particularly attractive to designers looking for powerful editing tools without the traditional subscription costs.
Canva has continued investing in the platform, introducing additional raw image-editing capabilities and expanding its availability through an iPad application.
Nevertheless, questions remain about how long the company will maintain its free-access model as financial pressures increase. Canva‘s decision to move the previously free background-removal service Remove.bg into its paid offering has already demonstrated how quickly the availability of creative tools can change.
The larger question is whether established creative software companies can remain competitive when AI makes it easier to generate both designs and the software used to create them.
For professional creatives, the threat is no longer limited to businesses replacing designers with AI-generated artwork. The companies providing the tools themselves are also being forced to adapt to a rapidly changing market.
Canva’s massive restructuring could therefore represent more than a difficult year for one technology company. It may be an early indication of how profoundly artificial intelligence is changing the economics of the entire creative software industry. How Two Moons Could Change Earth | Maya
