Canva cuts growth forecast as costs of rented AI models rise

Canva's new AI got so popular this year that it forced the company to cut its growth forecast by a third. The more people used it, the bigger the bill got, because too many of those requests ran on models Canva rented from the big AI labs. Growth guidance fell from 30% to 20%, and its biggest backers marked it down from $42 billion to $34.9 billion. Melanie Perkins, the CEO, told shareholders, "We were relying too heavily on frontier models." This week Canva shipped its way out, a model called Brush. Canva's 160-person research lab built it on top of an open-weights model, then trained it on Canva's own templates, editing data from users who opted in, and grades from the company's staff designers. It edits a deck about the way you would. Writes a little code, nudges the layout, checks…