Canva pushes wider as Miro resets

Canva is turning the suite into the story

Canva had the loudest fortnight. On 10 Sep, multiple reports said it had unveiled 100 upgrades aimed at office work and team collaboration. On 14 Sep, TechRepublic reported the same scale of update across the Visual Suite. The direction is clear from the observed activity: Canva is not merely polishing creative tooling, it is pushing further into the daily productivity layer where presentations, collaboration and branded work meet.

The developer-side signals moved in the same direction. On 14 Sep, weekly downloads rose for @canva/cli from 3,444 to 4,824, @canva/error from 4,938 to 6,861, @canva/asset from 4,676 to 6,401, and @canva/user from 4,261 to 5,999. That is not a launch headline, but it matters. A suite strategy needs an ecosystem, and package engagement rising in parallel with a 100-update product push is a useful tell.

There was also housekeeping beneath the campaign. On 14 Sep, Canva added 14 help pages around cookie banners, Google Analytics and Telkomsel across regional sites, while removing 14 pages including saving, social media scheduling and school teams. On the same date, Canva was reported to have made a $23mn investment in Sharon AI. The pattern is broad but coherent: office collaboration at the front, infrastructure and ecosystem work underneath.

Figma is selling into the enterprise while the market marks it down

Figma’s operating signal was stronger than its market signal. On 13 Sep, its Q2FY26 results were reported to show revenue up 48% year on year to $370.1mn. The same day, articles also noted share acquisitions by investment firms including Bienville Capital Management and Wellington Management Group, without a specific funding round or deal value being reported.

The public-market narrative was rougher. On 10 Sep, reports said Figma’s general counsel sold 109,000 shares for $2.8mn and that the stock had slid 26% over the previous seven days. On 13 Sep, further coverage described a $2.8mn stock sale by general counsel Brendan Mulligan, a 28% decline over eight consecutive days and the stock being down 69% overall. Those are not product facts, but they do shape how buyers, employees and rivals read momentum.

The hiring data points to where management wants control. On 9 Sep, Figma listed 159 Account Executive postings focused on enterprise clients across locations including San Francisco, New York, Bengaluru, Berlin, Singapore and Paris, with one role requiring Mandarin. On 13 Sep, it added three more postings, including Director of SMB Sales, Executive Assistant for Sales and Manager of Mid-Market Sales in London and São Paulo. In the same window, @figma/rest-api-spec downloads rose from 214,679 to 328,113, and @figma/code-connect moved from version 2.0.0 to 2.0.1 on 10 Sep.

Miro’s acquisition draws a new line under whiteboarding

Miro had the decisive corporate event. On 11 Sep, reports said Bending Spoons was acquiring the collaboration tools maker for $1.36bn in cash, a price described as a 90% decrease from Miro’s $17.5bn valuation in 2022. On 12 Sep, further coverage said Bending Spoons had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Miro for $1.36bn in cash. A Hacker News post on 11 Sep put the figure at $1.355bn and drew 95 points and 75 comments.

The deal lands after earlier workforce reductions that remain part of the company’s recent history. On 12 Sep, observed records noted layoffs of 119 employees on 2 Feb 2023 and 275 employees on 30 Oct 2024, with the latter representing 18% of the workforce. That context makes the acquisition look less like a simple category consolidation story and more like a reset for a product that once defined collaborative whiteboarding.

Miro was still hiring into the transition. On 11 Sep, it posted 39 openings in the previous week: 15 in engineering, 14 in sales, three in customer success, five in design and two in marketing. Roles included Director Product Design, Senior Threat Detection Engineer and Head of Sales for Nordics. Buyers will read the ownership change, valuation reset and hiring plan together.

The hidden theme was timing, not volume

The fortnight looked noisy because the headline count was high. The sharper read is the simultaneity. Canva’s 100-upgrade office push, package download increases and documentation reshuffle all surfaced on 14 Sep. Figma’s content refresh appeared on 13 Sep with six new blog posts, including local data hosting in Japan and generative plugins, plus two new product pages for resource libraries and webinars, while two blog posts and six product pages were removed. Miro’s hiring burst sat beside acquisition coverage on 11 Sep.

That sequencing says the category is being re-cut around trust, distribution and breadth. Cookie banners, Google Analytics documentation, local data hosting in Japan, resource libraries, webinars, REST API activity and sales hiring are not glamorous. They are the operational substrate of enterprise adoption. The visible competition is still design versus whiteboard versus brand suite. The quieter competition is who can look safest, broadest and most administrable to large teams.

Adobe’s leadership change sharpened the backdrop. On 10 Sep, articles tied Adobe naming Anil Chakravarthy as CEO on 4 Sep to competitive pressure from Figma and Canva. That is outside the core peer set, but it confirms the centre of gravity: design collaboration is now important enough to move the strategy of the incumbent creative software company.