Canva valuation drops as AI costs impact growth forecasts

Canva is facing a significant valuation reduction and lowered growth forecasts due to the high costs and competitive pressures of generative artificial intelligence. Major investors Blackbird Ventures and Airtree Ventures have revised the Australian company’s valuation down to $34.9 billion, a decrease of approximately 17% from its 2025 valuation of $42 billion.

CEO and co-founder Melanie Perkins stated that user demand for new AI capabilities “significantly exceeded” internal forecasts, leading to unexpected costs associated with continuous compute utilization. To manage these expenses, Canva has slowed its AI rollout to rebuild backend systems, though infrastructure overhauls have since reduced the cost per completed task by nearly 90% since April. Consequently, the company has cut its expected annual revenue growth rate to 20%.

This trend reflects broader challenges within the software-as-a-service sector. For example, Figma reported a significant drop in its free-cash-flow margin, falling from 27% in the first quarter to 14% in the second quarter, alongside decelerating revenue growth projections.