I got a chance to sit down with Salva Torres, Head of Growth for Canva’s Core Product to talk through Canva’s biggest bets—(Yes, its AI), how to design a growth organization at a $59b unicorn, and on price hike that backfired. Here’s the inside scoop.
Salva’s career in product growth reads like a tour of growth approaches:
And the Canva approach to growth, according to Salva?
“Solve the user problem first and everything else sorts itself out."
First order of growth business? Canva shook up how it delivers growth at scale. Centralized growth teams still own core ‘growth flows’ like payments and onboarding, but growth pods now sit inside every product line. You can call this approach Hybrid Growth; and we’ve seen across our own industry report that teams are increasingly adopting this hybrid model. See our 2025 Product Growth Report.
How do you get 5,000 people drinking the AI Koolaid? In early July, the entire company, pressed pause for AI Discovery Week.
“We literally stopped 5,000 people for a whole week and said, don’t do any BAU—learn AI, build stuff with AI, then we’ll get back to work.”
— Salva, describing the company‑wide sprint.
Freezing a profitable business for five days is a statement: AI fluency is foundational to Canva, not optional.
Buying a company for a single AI feature used to sound crazy. (At least before the $100m employment offers changed our sense of where the ceiling is.) Today, a background removal feature might sound like tablestakes, but when Canva bought Remove.bg in 2021 it changed the game.
“Even people who can do it on their phones open Canva just to remove backgrounds because ours works better.”
The move explains Canva’s M&A lens: if a micro‑workflow is (a) universal and (b) maddening when it fails, owning the absolute best version can be worth [undisclosed amount, but let’s assume a lot]. Today the background remover powers everything from Instagram posts to enterprise slide decks.
It’s consistent with Canva’s approach for tools like Magic Script, which help explains tools like Magic Script, which help users translate videos with AI.
“AI should get you 80% of the way; the editor lets you polish the last 20%,” Salva.
That credo, that AI can radically speed up content creation, powers features like Magic Studio, which recently reported now shows 16 billion uses. The idea that AI is getting good enough to design via prompt can make the handover feel seamless..
Shameless plug for Candu, we love this approach to designing via prompt: Join the Candu waitlist.
Analysts love comparing Canva vs. Adobe (as does leadership) As a google docs user, I see the overlap. Yet Salva sees a different day‑to‑day competition.
“It’s probably more CapCut than Adobe or Microsoft we watch every week.”
Why? Canva’s core market remains social media. TikTok’s gravity has pulled creators toward quick-cut video, and CapCut has become the platform’s default. That user pull into video has pulled Canva into a whole new competitive set.
Competition isn’t a brand‑vs‑brand slugfest; it’s a battle for the next user workflow.
After nearly a decade keeping legacy plans’ prices flat, Canva increased prices on some plans by as much as 300%. It cited a slew of new features and… AI. Some users were less than pleased. Reddit lit up; TechCrunch ran a headline; Canva decided to roll back and published a “Pricing Promise.”
“User trust is worth more than any dollar amount—or the technical debt that comes with grandfathered pricing.”
Lessons for growth leaders: Repricing your product now that it has AI might be harder than you think.
“We spent considerable energy on Slack and Teams integrations… and saw almost no return.”
In growth, not everything will work. Quite the opposite, if everything you try succeeds, you’re probably not taking enough risks or making enough big bets.
“It feels like a new job—fresh perspective, new stakeholders, healthy imposter syndrome.”
Despite X promotions, growth is still going to feel new. That’s part of the bargain.
Where’s your product’s AI‑to‑Human Handoff today—and where should it be?
.png)
