Valued at approximately $60 billion, Sydney based giant Canva has hit the brakes on its global operations as it puts aside nearly 5000 of its workers who take off from their work and dedicate an entire week for training in artificial intelligence.
Labeled as AI Discovery Week, the internal event held from 7 July to 11 July involved employees from different countries who joined various workshops, discussions and individual practices with popular AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini.
The event concluded with a two day internal hackathon labeled “Supercharged by AI” in which all employees were asked to come up with their own projects using newly acquired skills.
The firm reported that this event provided over 25,000 hours of actual hands-on AI experience for the Canvanauts.
Co founder and Chief Product Officer of Canva Cameron Adams admitted that this was part of a strategy aimed at ensuring that everyone within the company becomes fluent in AI technology, both engineers and other specialists.
Separate sessions were provided to accommodate technical and non technical people, the former being lawyers, accountants, designers, HR specialists and even cooks.
Some 70% of Canva staff already use AI tools on a daily basis, but the company said confidence and experience levels varied widely.
Staff started with a 30 minute foundations course covering the basics of prompting and how the tools work in Canva, before moving into deeper sessions and live experimentation.
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The program also addressed concern among the workforce that AI would eat into career paths.
Adams confirmed the company hosted dedicated panels addressing what he described as understandable concerns, as well as sessions on AI ethics and sustainability.
In a post on LinkedIn, Cameron Adams, Co founder and Chief Product Officer of Canva, said: “We want to help our teams get better at AI capabilities.”
This strategy is in line with an emerging trend within the technology industry, as firms compete to train their employees quickly enough to adapt to the rapid release of models.
According to a Miro survey of 8000 global workers quoted in Canva, 54% said they did not have sufficient time and resources to learn AI to fulfill their job responsibilities.
Canva, established in 2013 by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Adams, has emerged as one of Australia’s highest valued private firms, with yearly sales exceeding US$4 billion and more than 265 million users.
