Canva Lowers Growth Rate Due to AI Costs

Design software company Canva adjusted its expected revenue growth rate to 20%, one-third lower than previous forecasts, due to a surge in the cost of providing generative AI features.

CEO Melanie Perkins stated that while demand for new AI features was significantly higher than expected, the cost per task was too high for a broad launch.

Canva is delaying the full launch of its AI features and is proceeding with the following tasks:

• Reducing unit costs for AI tasks
• Rebuilding architecture
• Strengthening business models aligned with profitability

Canva is expanding beyond design tools into an enterprise work software platform by adding features such as Canva Code. This cost issue demonstrates that expanding AI features requires securing not only user demand but also the economics of inference and delivery costs.