Canva’s reset, Australia’s tech boom and the next investment question

I can appreciate what Canva has built and still feel the weight of this week’s news.

Canva began in Australia and grew into a global creative platform. In its 2025 review, the company reported 260 million people using Canva each month and US$3.5 billion in revenue. In 2021, it announced a US$200 million funding round at a US$40 billion valuation. Those are extraordinary milestones for a business that started here and made visual communication easier for people who were never trained as designers.[1][2]

That achievement deserves recognition. So does the human cost of a major restructure.

The headline needs care

Canva’s 4 November team update said 1,271 people—22 per cent of the company—would be affected by organisational changes. That figure includes people whose roles will change, people asked to relocate, and people who will leave. It is not a confirmed count of 1,271 redundancies. Reuters corrected its initial report to make that distinction clear.[3][4]

Canva says growth has slowed for the first time in a decade and describes this as the hardest moment in its 13-year history. Its explanation is a mix of changing technology and internal structure: more handovers between Product, Growth and Platform; fragmented ownership; narrow specialisations; and too many layers. The company says it will bring those groups together, broaden some roles, simplify management and base more product teams in Sydney.[3]

AI is part of the competitive context, but Canva’s announcement does not say that AI directly caused these job impacts. That matters. Atlassian, by contrast, said in March that a reduction of about 1,600 roles would help fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales. Two Australian software companies can be adapting to the same technology shift while giving different reasons for their workforce decisions. We should not collapse those stories into one explanation.[4][5]

There is another reason this moment has landed heavily. In an April interview, Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht described slowing hiring as a deliberate way to avoid the abrupt “hire fast, cut later” pattern seen elsewhere. By November, the company was announcing a much larger organisation-wide change.[6] That contrast does not prove that leaders acted in bad faith: plans can change as conditions change. But it does show why public confidence about jobs needs to be framed with humility. Employees hear more than a forecast; they hear something about whether they can plan their lives around it.

Canva has also set out support for people leaving, including at least six months of salary, career and wellbeing assistance, and a US$10,000 grant for people who want to start something of their own. Those measures are worth acknowledging. They do not make a relocation or job loss painless, but they are part of the company’s responsibility in handling the transition.[3]

Australia’s technology funding: boom, correction, rebound

Canva’s workforce story is not the same thing as the Australian technology investment story. To understand the wider picture, I find it useful to separate venture funding from what companies spend on technology.

Cut Through Venture and Folklore Ventures recorded a record A$10.1 billion across 682 announced Australian startup deals in 2021. The funding cycle then turned. In 2023, their annual report recorded A$3.5 billion across 413 deals—54 per cent below 2022.[7][8]

By 2025, the headline had improved: A$5.4 billion across 390 announced deals, up 31 per cent on the year before and the third-largest total on record. But the recovery was selective. Deal numbers were below 2024, the 20 largest deals accounted for 58 per cent of all capital, and 15 of 25 sectors raised less than they had in 2024. AI was the biggest named sector, and 61 per cent of funding went to startups with an AI offering.[9]

The most recent quarter makes the concentration even clearer. Q3 2026 saw a record A$4.2 billion announced across 78 venture deals and 14 accelerator rounds. One company, AI data-centre infrastructure firm Firmus, raised A$2.85 billion—69 per cent of the quarter’s total. Without that round, funding was A$1.3 billion. The top ten deals captured 93 per cent of Q3 capital.[10]

So, yes, capital is flowing into Australian technology. But a record total does not mean every founder or early-stage company can find money. The latest quarter is a record largely because of one exceptionally large infrastructure deal. And these figures measure announced startup financing—not all Australian IT spending, company valuations, or money invested in research and development.

IT spending is still growing—but proof of value matters

The wider IT spending outlook remains positive. Gartner forecasts that Australian organisations will spend A$192.3 billion on IT in 2027, up 8.7 per cent from 2026. Within that forecast, software spending is expected to reach A$68.3 billion, while infrastructure as a service is forecast to grow 22.1 per cent and data-centre systems 16.6 per cent.[11]

That is a forecast, not a receipt for money already spent. Still, it points to continued investment in software, cloud capacity and the infrastructure needed to run AI systems. Canva’s own April launch of AI 2.0 shows the product side of that shift: a move towards conversational creation, agentic workflows and editable AI-generated work.[12]

But buying technology and creating value from it are different things. The Reserve Bank of Australia found that technology investment by Australian businesses had risen almost 80 per cent over the previous decade, with software’s share of private business investment increasing from about 6 per cent to 10.5 per cent. In interviews with 105 medium-to-large firms, cybersecurity and upgrades to internal software were important investment drivers. The RBA also noted that few firms had reported material AI-driven productivity gains so far, and that embedding new technology can take years.[13]

The adoption gap matters too. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that 12 per cent of businesses used AI in 2024–25, compared with 1 per cent in 2021–22. Adoption was higher among large businesses—35 per cent—than medium-sized businesses at 22 per cent, and small and micro businesses at about 11 per cent. Those figures tell us whether businesses report using AI; they do not tell us how deeply it is embedded or whether it has improved productivity.[14]

The practical question for future IT investment is therefore not simply, “Are we buying AI?” It is, “Can we make it useful, safe and affordable in the work people actually do?”

The next investment cycle needs more than a model

Canva’s own experience makes the economics visible. Its AI 2.0 launch shows an ambitious product direction. In August, Startup Daily reported that Canva had lowered its 2026 growth target from 30 per cent to 20 per cent and slowed parts of the rollout while rebuilding architecture and reducing the cost of serving AI tasks. The report said the company had cut that cost per task by 90 per cent.[12][15] These are reported company updates, not audited measures, but the underlying lesson is clear: AI capability has to work as a product and as a cost model.

That changes what I think boards, technology leaders and investors should look for. The next dollar may go to computing capacity or a cloud platform, but value also depends on data quality, security, integration with existing systems, usage controls, process redesign and staff who know how to use the tools. These are not side projects. They are the work that turns a promising demonstration into a reliable business outcome.

It also changes how we should talk about job reductions. A smaller workforce can coincide with increased investment in AI, as Atlassian said was part of its plan. But a headcount reduction is not, by itself, proof that an organisation has become more productive. To know whether the change created value, we would need to look at the full picture: what was invested, what costs were removed or added, what service improved, and whether customers and employees are better off.[5][13]

There is a risk that the funding story becomes too narrow. If most capital flows to large AI infrastructure rounds, Australia can build impressive capacity while smaller businesses still struggle to connect tools to their day-to-day work. ABS adoption figures suggest there is room for much wider use, especially among small and medium-sized businesses.[10][14] That means future investment should include practical implementation: secure connections to existing systems, straightforward tools, training, support and clear measures of benefit—not just access to the newest model.

And it means treating people as part of the investment case. If organisations remove roles before they have redesigned the work, they may cut away knowledge they still need. If they make changes without clear explanations, they can damage trust just when they need people to learn new tools and carry new responsibilities. That is an inference, not a claim that a particular Canva decision will have a particular outcome. But workforce capability and confidence are real conditions for successful technology adoption.

What I take from Canva’s story

Canva’s growth shows what Australian technology can achieve when a useful product meets a global need. Its current reset does not cancel that achievement. Nor should the painful workforce impact be treated as a routine footnote to a product launch or an abstract “AI transformation”. Both things can be true at once.

The wider data does not point to a simple collapse in technology investment. Startup funding rebounded in 2025 and set a concentrated record in Q3 2026; Gartner expects Australian IT spending to grow further in 2027. But the capital is unevenly distributed, AI adoption remains far from universal, and firms are still working to show where productivity gains will come from.[9][10][11][14]

For me, the lesson is that the next phase should be judged by the quality of the value created—not by the size of the AI budget, the number of pilots, or the speed of a restructure. When technology influences decisions, operates at scale or creates meaningful cost and risk, someone still needs to own the outcome. That means visible costs, sensible controls, clear measures and honest communication about uncertainty.

I want Australia to keep backing ambitious technology companies. I also want that ambition matched by patience, accountability and care for the people who build the products. Canva’s story is still one of Australian ingenuity. The next chapter—for Canva and for our wider tech sector—will be measured by whether investment in AI becomes lasting value for customers, businesses and the people doing the work.