Canva’s big layoffs say a lot about the AI design landscape

Canva didn’t cite AI as a reason, but this week’s layoffs appear to be a cost-cutting measure to fund AI features. Recently, Canva lowered its revenue forecast from 30% to 20%, largely due to the cost of AI tokens. Its previous efforts to reduce token use per task apparently weren’t enough. With about nine free users for every paid user, a large share of the site’s AI traffic came from free users. Nothing is free - now the former employees are paying for it.