Canva, the Australian design company that became one of software's great success stories, announced the first restructuring in its history, affecting 1,271 roles, about 22% of its workforce. According to reports, it comes after the company's growth slowed for the first time in a decade. CEO Melanie Perkins called the decision the hardest in the company's 13 years.
To be precise: 1,271 is the number of affected employees, not necessarily the number laid off. Some will move to other roles and some will be asked to relocate. The company also stressed it is not replacing workers with AI. Still, the context is hard to ignore: Canva built its business on making design accessible to anyone without a designer. Today AI tools do exactly that, faster and sometimes for free.
That is the threat Canva faces. When every chatbot can produce a logo, presentation or social post in seconds, a simple design tool's edge erodes. Canva builds AI tools of its own, many of them popular, but the competition is no longer just Adobe or freelance designers. It is OpenAI, Google and anyone building image generation into their product.
Why does it matter to Israel? Because the pattern repeats. monday.com cut about 20% of its workforce in July, Fiverr is losing buyers to AI tools, and other software companies are cutting. Canva's story shows that even a very successful company with a beloved product and millions of users is not immune. The question is no longer whether AI will change software companies' business models, but who will change in time before the old model collapses.
For tech workers the conclusion is unpleasant but clear: even companies that look safe may be shaken. Anyone working at a software company should ask not only whether it is succeeding today, but whether its product will still be relevant when AI does most of the work it does now.
