‘12 billion or even less’: As offshore investors air Canva doubts, Australia’s top VCs mark it down

Australia's leading venture capital firms have joined a wave of institutional revaluations of Canva, the design software unicorn founded by Melanie Perkins. Blackbird Ventures and Airtree, among Canva's earliest and most prominent backers, have reduced their valuation estimates by 17 percent to USD34.9 billion from USD42 billion after commissioning independent external assessments. The timing coincided with high-profile public debate among influential venture investors questioning whether the company's valuation could fall as low as USD12 billion, particularly in light of artificial intelligence disruption concerns.

The markdown reflects mounting pressure on private market valuations across the tech sector. Canva itself has signaled steeper internal value erosion, with its independent valuation for employee share issuances declining from USD38.9 billion to USD31 billion over the past twelve months. This internal adjustment, steeper than the Blackbird-Airtree markdown, suggests management and board acknowledgment of fundamental valuation challenges. The company's value trajectory shows significant deterioration from its peak of USD40 billion in September 2021, a period that marked the height of venture capital deployment in late-stage private companies.

Institutional investors outside Australia are applying additional pressure. T. Rowe Price, a major U.S. institutional investor with exposure to Canva, has written down its position by an additional 30 percent, signaling that large, reputable institutional money managers are reassessing the company's growth prospects and market defensibility. This broader institutional skepticism—extending beyond Australian venture capital circles—suggests concerns about Canva's competitive positioning are not isolated to any single geography or investor type.

The Canva revaluation underscores the broader challenge facing late-stage private software companies: sustained pressure to demonstrate clear pathways to profitability and sustainable competitive moats in an increasingly competitive, AI-inflected landscape. For investors who entered at or near the USD65 billion implied valuation, a further decline toward USD12 billion would represent a catastrophic loss of capital. The markdowns by Blackbird and Airtree, while substantial, appear to reflect a more measured correction than the most pessimistic offshore investor commentary, suggesting significant valuation dispersion remains among market participants.