Canva CEO Melanie Perkins on Enterprise Growth, Competing With AI Labs, and Token Pricing
Canva CEO Melanie Perkins sat down for a wide-ranging interview covering the company's rapid enterprise expansion, its strategy for competing with AI-native design tools from major AI labs, its move toward token-based pricing, and its decision to invest in developing its own AI models rather than relying entirely on third-party providers.
Enterprise Is Now the Core Bet
Perkins described enterprise as Canva's most important growth vector, with the company having significantly accelerated its push into large organizations over the past two years. Canva for Teams and Canva Enterprise have attracted major corporations looking for a design platform that non-designers can use effectively. Perkins noted that enterprise customers increasingly want AI features built directly into design workflows — not bolted on as separate tools.
Competing With AI Labs on Design
When asked about competition from AI image generators built by OpenAI, Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, and Google, Perkins pushed back on the framing: Canva isn't competing with image generators, she argued — it's competing for the end-to-end design workflow. "Generating an image is one step. Canva is the whole production pipeline," she said. The company's advantage is the combination of generation, editing, collaboration, and publishing in one platform.
Token Pricing and the AI Cost Challenge
Perkins acknowledged that AI features carry significant compute costs and that Canva is moving toward token-based pricing for AI-heavy features to better align revenue with costs. This mirrors moves by OpenAI and Anthropic to shift enterprise customers from flat-rate to consumption-based billing. She framed it as a necessary evolution as AI usage per user scales dramatically.
Investing in Own Models
In a notable strategic disclosure, Perkins confirmed that Canva is investing in training its own AI models for specific design tasks — not trying to build general-purpose foundation models, but specialized models optimized for layout, typography, and brand consistency. This reduces dependency on third-party API providers and allows Canva to fine-tune capabilities that matter most for design use cases.
The Bottom Line
Canva's strategy under Perkins is evolving from a consumer-friendly design tool into an enterprise AI design platform. The combination of token pricing, proprietary models, and an end-to-end workflow positions Canva to capture significant enterprise value — if it can stay ahead of both AI-native competitors and Adobe's own AI investments.