6 month pay, laptop and $10,000 grant: inside Canva's Layoff

Canva is cutting deep, but it is also trying to soften the landing. The Australian design platform this week announced a restructure touching 1,271 people, about 22% of its global workforce, alongside a departure package that has drawn unusual praise for a layoff round.

Every departing employee will get at least six months' salary, a year of health cover, help finding new work and the laptop they were issued. Those who want to strike out on their own can apply for a $10,000 grant, with Canva taking no stake in whatever they build.

The cuts are the first company-wide redundancies in Canva's 13-year history. Co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins called it "without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history" in a note to staff. The company has not said how many of the 1,271 will leave, and how many will instead relocate or move into new roles.

What departing staff get

The core of the package is cash. Every employee who leaves will receive at least six months' salary in any country, with statutory redundancy entitlements counted inside that figure rather than paid on top.

The rest of the package reaches well beyond a cheque:

• Equity: the standard one-year vesting cliff is waived, so people with less than a year's service keep their shares.

• Health: 12 months of continued healthcare coverage in eligible countries, plus a year of Canva Care, the company's employee assistance programme, which also covers family members.

• Job search: one-on-one career coaching, CV reviews and interview practice with members of Canva's own recruitment team, and a year of LinkedIn Premium.

• Network: an opt-in alumni directory that Canva will share with its investors, partners and industry contacts.

• Equipment: leavers keep their company-issued MacBooks.

Canva's recruiters will help people prepare, but the company is not promising anyone a job elsewhere.

A no-strings bet on former staff

The most unusual element is the new Canva Collective Fund. Departing employees can apply for grants of US$10,000 to start a business or run a project that benefits their local community.

Canva says it will take no equity or ownership in anything the grants pay for. Leavers have until 14 December 2026 to register their interest.

The sum will not bankroll a start-up on its own. But it gives people a reason to treat their exit as a starting point, not only a loss.

Praise, with some scepticism

Much of the early reaction has been warm. Jasveer Singh, co-founder and chief executive of KnotDating, called the package "a master-class in how to handle layoffs". Mark Di Stefano, who edits the Australian Financial Review's Rear Window column, described it as very generous.

Not everyone is convinced. Some commenters on X suspected there would be fine print attached to the grants. Others argued that six months' pay may not stretch far in a tough market for tech jobs.

There is also a larger unknown. Canva has not split the 1,271 affected people into those being let go, those being reassigned and those asked to relocate, so the true number of job losses is still unclear.

How it compares

Six months' pay works out to roughly 26 weeks, well above Australia's legal floor. Under the Fair Work Act, redundancy pay starts at four weeks after one year of service and peaks at 16 weeks for staff with nine to ten years. People with less than a year's service are not entitled to any.

It also edges past one of the most closely watched local layoffs of the year. When Atlassian cut about 1,600 jobs in March, it offered at least 16 weeks' pay plus a week for every year of service.

The gap is widest for newer staff. A Canva employee with two years' service gets the same six months as a long-serving colleague, where Atlassian's formula would have paid about 18 weeks.

Why Canva is cutting

The generosity sits against a harder financial backdrop. Perkins told staff that growth had slowed this year for the first time in a decade, after Canva cut its revenue growth forecast to 20%, down from 38% in 2025 and 45% the year before.

Investors have marked the company down too. Two of its backers, Blackbird Ventures and Airtree, reportedly lowered their valuations from A$60bn at the end of 2025 to about A$49bn. A float once expected in 2027 has reportedly been shelved.

The restructure itself is about simplifying. Canva will fold its Product, Growth and Platform teams into a single product organisation, remove management layers and merge overlapping roles. Sydney will become the main base for more product teams, which is why some staff are being asked to move.

Perkins did not blame artificial intelligence directly, saying only that new technology is changing what people create and expect from their tools. But the cuts follow a run of AI launches, including Canva AI 2.0 in April, the in-house image model Craft in October and the design-editing model Canva Brush last week.

What happens next

Affected staff will learn more over the coming weeks. Canva has scheduled a company-wide meeting for 10 November, with meetings inside each part of the business from 11 November.

Blackbird, which owns about 10% of Canva, has said it backs the changes. For the people leaving, the package will not replace a job they did not choose to lose. It may, though, set a new benchmark that other tech employers are measured against when their own cuts come.