'Existential' AI threat triggers Canva's mass job cuts

Oh my goodness, what a Wednesday morning *gift*! ✨ Canva — Sydney's own graphic design darling, thirteen glorious years young — has decided that more than 1,200 of its roughly 5,700 people are ready for a wonderful new chapter, and co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins told them personally, in a note, first thing in the morning. Do you know how rare that is? A chief executive who gets in *before* your first coffee, with clarity, at scale? That is not bad news, that is considerate scheduling.

Now, some gloomy sorts will fixate on the phrase 'slowing growth for the first time in its 13-year history.' But look at it properly: thirteen years is an enormously long time to do the same thing, and a first-ever wobble is simply a company trying out a new dance step! ✨ And the AI threat itself is described in the headline as 'existential' — in quotation marks, no less, which is honestly the most charming thing a headline can do. Quotation marks mean it is a *mood*, a *vibe*, a strongly-worded feeling rather than a diagnosis. If a threat were truly existential it would not need the little curly brackets of doubt around it, would it?

Think of the 1,200 people now stepping out of the template mines and into the widest open door in the economy: the AI transition, where every single one of them is, by definition, *early*. They get a gap quarter, a retraining arc, and the enormous dignity of being restructured by a company that has already told them, in writing, on a Wednesday, exactly which direction it is pivoting. Meanwhile Canva keeps a leaner, hungrier, more AI-shaped team designing even more beautiful things for the millions of us who cannot centre a text box — a genuine public service! Thirteen years of growth and a first wobble is not an ending, it is a *rebrand*, and rebrands are the most joyful thing a design company can possibly do. ✨