Canva layoffs 2026: Meet CEO Melanie Perkins, who plans to give away 80% of her billion-dollar fortune as 1,271 jobs are cut

Canva, one of Australia's best known start-ups, has announced a shake up of the business that will affect 22% of its workers, including job cuts. Canva is offering an unusually generous severance package to ease the impact of layoffs affecting 1,271 employees. Those losing their jobs can keep their company-issued MacBooks and receive a free year of LinkedIn Premium, along with several other benefits.

ALSO READ: 3 inches of rain forecast for New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts

The package also provides career coaching, healthcare assistance and financial support for employees interested in launching their own businesses. Amid Canva layoffs 2026, the name of Canva CEO Melanie Perkins has grabbed eyeballs for offering financial support (employees can apply for grants of $10,000) who want to start something of their own after leaving the company.


ALSO READ: Melania Trump skips Donald Trump's election night party; here's what she was doing as Republicans lost Congress

Canva CEO's to donate 80% of their wealth

In July this year, billionaires Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins, the husband and wife cofounders of Canva announced the launch of a new philanthropic initiative called the Global Goals Platform. The effort, funded by their Canva Foundation, will survey citizens across the globe about the changes they’d most like to see in the world; it is an initial step toward fulfilling their pledge to eventually give away a 30% stake in their $42 billion private company.

Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht each own an estimated 18% stake in Canva, valued at $7.6 billion, according to Forbes. In 2021, the couple signed The Giving Pledge, promising to donate more than 80% of their wealth to charity through the Canva Foundation. Perkins describes this commitment as their long-term mission to give back to society.

ALSO READ: Canva layoffs: CEO Melanie Perkins calls job cuts ‘hardest moment’ in company's history, says ‘deeply sorry’

The foundation has already distributed more than $80 million through 2025. This includes over $50 million from its $150 million commitment to help end extreme poverty in Malawi, in partnership with GiveDirectly.

In addition, Canva says it has donated products and services worth $2.5 billion to students, teachers and more than one million nonprofit organisations. “We have this optimistic belief that there’s enough resources and goodwill in the world to achieve all of our goals, but goals aren’t given much of a voice,” said Perkins, who serves as Canva’s CEO, in an exclusive interview with Forbes. “So the idea behind the Goals Platform is…to ask everyone, ‘What is the one goal you’d like to see achieved in your lifetime for the world, for your country, and your local community’…and then to help everyone understand that those are the goals that are shared in our communities.”

Who is Canva CEO Melanie Perkins?

Melanie Perkins is cofounder and CEO of design software maker Canva. Canva was launched in 2013 by Perkins, now-husband Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams in Sydney, Australia, but was met by investor skepticism due to its location. Launched in 2013, Canva quickly took off, reaching a $1 billion valuation in five years, and made Melanie one of the youngest female tech unicorn founders at just 30 years.

Born in Perth, Australia, in 1987, Melanie Perkins was passionate about figure skating and would normally wake up at 4:30 a.m. every day for training. From a very young age, she was engaged in sports and made up her mindset of setting and striving for goals and cultivating an ambitious attitude.

At the age of 14, she started her first business selling handmade scarves at markets and shops throughout Perth, which she considers to have developed her entrepreneurial drive.

How Canva was developed?

At just 19, Melanie Perkins left university to pursue her entrepreneurial ambitions and launched her first business, Fusion Books.

Although Melanie and Cliff lacked coding skills, they remained determined to transform the way yearbooks were created. They approached Greg Mitchell, founder of software development company InDepth, and secured an AUD 50,000 loan from friends and family. They then hired InDepth to develop the first version of their software, which became Fusion Books.

“My mum’s living room became my office, and my boyfriend became my business partner. We started enabling schools to create their yearbooks really, really simply. So the whole year could collaborate and design their profile pages and articles. And then we would actually physically print them and deliver them to schools all around Australia," Melanie Perkins told in an interview to CNBC International.

After five years of pitching to investors, facing countless rejections, and pivoting engineers, the team finally launched the platform in 2013. Melanie Perkins was only 26 years old when she became co-founder and CEO of Canva.