Canva cuts AI task cost 90% after slowing rollout

Canva says rebuilding its AI stack cut average task-serving cost 90%, even as the company reduced its 2026 growth forecast from 30% to 20% after slowing the rollout. Startup Daily’s account of Canva’s shareholder update says Canva’s own video model is 17 times cheaper than a frontier model and its image model 30 times cheaper, while June-quarter revenue still grew 25.2% to $921.9 million. Operators working through the break-even math of routing AI workloads should file away the trade: unit-cost control can require deliberately sacrificing near-term distribution rather than hiding inference subsidies inside growth.