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Cameron Adams

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2026-04-20
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2026-04-20
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  1. “We have been investing in the areas that we really need to, so becoming domain experts in design has been a really critical part of our research strategy. But then partnering with incredible companies that are spending billions of dollars to build the best in their own areas and then bringing that technology onto Canver is also a key part of the way we're approaching this, being experts in design, because that's where we really need to specialize because it isn't great technology in that space. And then we've got 100 person research team working very specifically on these problems themselves. On the AI credit front, we have different tiering available for each of the different packages. So in free, you get a certain number of yet limited credits and then in Pro we get much more generous and then in our business package you get far more generous than enterprise more so but actually for the first million users we're giving everyone an AI pass which we're really excited about”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “That's why everybody comes back. It's surprising, but it turns out it's a fun game to play to see if I can get through the media training, Melanie. The other question I have is who the model providers that you have doing this are, right? Because we are hearing every single day that token use rates for a gentic software are through the roof. We're watching Anthropic have to modify its pricing. There's all kinds of stuff happening in that world. And you're launching an Agentic AI product. That just from the interface alone makes you want to use it a lot. It's not like, and you know, Anthropic literally has in Claude, there's like a usage meter and it will tell you like you're done now or pay us more money. Are you going to have like a token usage meter in Canva in the same way?”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “I'm just curious what bet you made there because it feels like the industry is not coalesced on a strategy. So is it actually clicking around Canva or is there some other way of the AI addressing the tools?”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Is described as an orchestra because there's so many tools and systems under the hood that need to talk together to be able to bring that thing to life. So when you say, I want to create a wanted poster for my daughter's birthday party, it will then be able to go and use background remover. It will be able to go and use all of the different tools to be able to assemble that. But from a user standpoint, they just get to say what they want and then we go and do the hard work to achieve that goal.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “So, I think the reason we've been able to make so much progress in this space, firstly, was a decade of investment in this interoperable format. So being able to have this design format that spans presentations and whiteboards and docs and videos, the full gamut has been a really powerful part of when we launched the foundational model, the design foundational model, it actually is able to create across all of these different formats and is that layered file, which means that you can operate at a full design level, you can operate on a page level, you can operate on a photo level or text. And so the huge investment in that space is why we've been able to bring this to life. with kind of AI 2.0 and there's an extraordinary amount of complexity behind the scenes. We've had hundreds of people working on this project for some years to get to this point in time. But I think that the really important part is one of our engineers.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “AI I think I understand how the user will see it. I think architecturally, I'm very curious how you build the product that way, because it doesn't seem like there's like some industry standard way of saying, now you can use this software. About half of the attempts I see are we're just going to take screenshots of everything and very slowly click around. And there's an infinite number of variations on that approach. There's the MCP approach, which everyone was really high on and seems to have arrived at whatever point it's going to arrive at. And now maybe half the industry is back at, well, we should just do APIs. What approach did you land on?”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “You hit the nail on the head with what we were doing with Canva 2.0.0. So it actually goes across the entirety of Canva and it means, so you were using Canva AI 1.0. I'm very excited to get your hands on Canva AI 2.0. We'll have to get you into the million, though I guess by the time this podcast out, maybe we'll have to make a special exception because it'll help you with exactly that. And so you can say for your example, for your wanted posters, create me the wanted poster and you can upload the photos and it can actually orchestrate all of the different tools in Canva to be able to create that on the fly without you having to go to the different spots. But you can still go and edit the different particular parts, the element editing if you want, but it actually is able to orchestrate it and then create a layered file in Canvas standard format.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Can I ask just a question about the relationship of the AI to the tools in Canva? And I'm going to basically just do personal tech support with you. So I use Canva this week. My daughter's having a detective-themed birthday party. So we took photos of all our friends. We're going to make wanted posters. I was like, I'm going to talk to Melanie. And I better use Canva to do this, right? It seemed very natural. So I could ask you very weedsy tech support questions. Just in the version of Canva that I was using, It was clear that the AI tools operated in some places and not others, right? They weren't seeing the whole Canva tool palette. And very simply as background remover, which I believe is like one of your most popular tools. It's everyone's most popular tool. I could do it in some parts of Canva and not the other. I couldn't look at my sort of like finish layout and say, actually, can you just go ahead and remove the background from this photo? I had to get to where I needed to be and then ask the question.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Just in the normal canva that you know and love, and then you can just edit that as you would typically do. After a lot of experimentation, that was where we landed, that it's just, it's so powerful to be able to dictate for everyone's different accessibility needs, even accessibility needs on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes now I can just be talking to my phone, ask it to generate something, and you can just do that on the fly. But then that creates a normal Canva design that you can collaborate, you can edit, you can use our 100 million plus stock photos and illustrations and drag and drop and design that. So really the huge opportunity is this end-to-end workflow of being able to take an idea and turn that into a finished usable work in one seamless platform.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “So, I think that's where I was going through those three tiers of pixels, objects, and concepts. I think that's what's really exciting to me is that we're in most chapels out there, you kind of like in a chat and you kind of go backwards and forwards asking for the same thing and it will regenerate the entire thing over and over again. It's kind of annoying. But with Canva AI, you've got the ability to have the conversational editing, which is extraordinarily powerful and brings completely new capabilities. But then you have the normal Canva that you know and love, where you can just drag and drop, you can collaborate, you can do all your iterative editing, you can go and change a word here and update that and not having to prompt to do that. So it actually helps to make complex things simple by bringing it all together into one spot. Rather than having to, so you'll see in the interface, there's Canva AI, it's like a brand new tab inside the editor. And so you can go there, you can dictate into your phone, you can do it on the fly, get that first pass, and then it will lay it out.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “I'm curious for this. I'm just looking at pictures of the interface. It looks like a chat bot. You can ask it all kinds of questions as you showed off make me a content plan. Do a bunch of stuff for me out on these platforms. You can connect directly to the platforms and have it published for you. That feels like, in particular, the cutting edge of marketing is automating the creation of assets and the publishing to platforms and collecting the data and iterating through that. But the interface is still a chat bot. And it feels like maybe that's going to be the interface for everything forever. Did you experiment with other kinds of interfaces or is it just the open-ended text boxes, the end-all, be all of AI?”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “I have to ask you, I'm looking at the presentation about all of this. It was obviously made in Canva. I know you told me last time that the whole company works in Canva. Did you automate the creation of your own deck announcing the AI tools or did you make it all by hand?”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Still, very importantly, with design at its core. I was going deep the other day into the definition of design and to design is to mark an idea. And really to mark an idea is at the essence of design. So we're really excited about bringing new tools and capabilities to be able to do exactly that.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Okay, so let's get into it. So, when we launch Canva for the very first time, we really, one of the huge innovations that we had was moving from pixels where everything was very granular and required deep expertise to be able to move anything around, to be able to design anything to objects where you could lay out a design, you could just have ideas for different objects, you could search our stock photography library, our illustration library, you could drag it onto the page, you start with a template or start from scratch, you could collaborate and design. And now what we're really excited about is with AI, we're moving into the concept layer. So you can just take an idea, you can write it in, and then something can get created for you. But very importantly, you can still move into the Canvas object editor and lay things out, collaborate, edit away. And so we're really excited about bringing it to this third tier of concept editing, which we think will be extraordinarily exciting. So it's our biggest launch ever, and becoming the system where work happens end to end.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “But I'm looking at a press release that says we're moving from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design tools. That seems like more than bringing the latest and greatest technology, right? It seems like a rethinking of what Canvas product is. Unpack that a little bit for me.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “So there are some things that are changing, and there are many things that remain the same. So, our mission is still to empower the world to design, and we're going to be doing that very much over the years to come. But something that we've always believed is that we should take the latest and greatest technology, we should build the latest and greatest technology and put that into our community's hands and enable them to achieve their goals. And what is the latest and greatest technology has certainly changed over the last few years. And so obviously AI is at the center of that change, but obviously the latest and greatest technology today is AI. And so a really exciting, excited to be doubling down into that space.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “I am very excited to talk to you again. It's been a couple years. You're last on the show in 2024. We talked about AI and design and the feelings people have about AI and design. And I was looking at that interview again just to prepare for this one. And a lot of the themes are all the same and then the facts surrounding those themes have changed so dramatically in the past two years. And on top of that, you have big news that I really want to dig into. So let's just start at the start. The last time you were on the show, I said, what is Canva? And you said, Canva is an online design platform. And your news this week is that I believe the company is changing its own conception of itself. Tell us about that change and what led into it.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “The biggest player in the space. You tell me if I got it or bite. There's a lot in this one. Like I said, I always enjoy talking to them. Okay, Canvas CEO Melanie Perkins. Here we go. You are the founder and CEO of Canva. Welcome back to Dak”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Users. These new AI tools are still in beta, so there's a lot to be worked out, but you'll hear Melanie say she's confident that Canvas' growth in enterprise will continue to accelerate as more and more companies look for tools that automate tasks like making presentations. But of course, that's the same idea as a lot of other big AI players aiming for corporate dollars. And so Melanie and I talked a lot about whether Canva is the right platform to bring everything all together. Unsurprisingly, she thinks it is. Not least because she runs Canva using Canva. I also asked Melanie for an updated vibe check on AI in design. Melanie is herself a designer, but pull after poll shows that people really do not like AI right now. And the fears around job displacement and being overrun by slop all come to a head in a piece of creative software that maybe doesn't require creatives anymore. Melanie had a lot of thoughts here as well, and I did my best to get her to talk about Adobe, which is also adding AI tools and raising prices, a deadly combination for”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “Melanie in Canva are pushing even more aggressively into integrating AI. The company just announced a big new update that allows people to simply tell Canva what to make and have it go through various data sources like Slack and email to build presentations, documents, and other design materials. Those projects arrive as regular old Canva files, which you can edit at will. You'll hear Melanie come back to that idea several times, having the output of the Canva AI system be regular old Canva files is a big deal so that users can refine that work and make it what they actually need. The idea here to borrow the company's tagline is that Canva is, quote, moving from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design tools. I'll let you all sit with that for a minute. Obviously, I dug into all of these ideas with Melanie and how she's thinking about Canva's relationship to the AI model providers, the cost of the token required to automate an app like Canva in this way, and the kinds of pricing that might lead to for years.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “And welcome to Dakoder. I'm Neili Patel, editor in chief of the Verge. And Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Melanie Perkins, founder and CEO of Canva, the popular design tool. I always enjoy talking with Melanie. She was last on the show a couple years ago, just as the AI revolution was coming to the world of art and design. At the time, Canva had escaped a lot of the criticism level that competitors adding AI tools, something Melanie attributed both to how much Canva users loved the product and also the fact that the company was making huge inroads into the business world. Canva is a tool that empowers non-designers to make design, and that group of people was just trying to get work done. They didn't seem nearly as threatened by AI as creative professionals using other creative software. Canva users may have even felt empowered. Well, now it's two years later, and it's safe to say that AI is all over modern design software and a lot more people have had a lot more feelings about AI in general.”

    2026-04-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT