Canva doubles down on AI and marketing automation efforts with acquisitions of Simtheory and Ortto

Canva on Wednesday announced the dual acquisition of Simtheory, an AI collaboration and agent management platform, and Ortto, a customer data and marketing automation company. The financial terms of the deals were not disclosed. Canva says the acquisitions are part of its ongoing investment in artificial intelligence and marketing infrastructure.

The companies were founded by Chris and Mike Sharkey, former founders of holiday rental service Stayz, which was acquired by Fairfax Media. The duo will join Canva in leadership roles across the company’s AI and marketing technology teams.

Canva says the acquisitions add strengths in agentic AI, data infrastructure, marketing automation, and customer engagement, helping Canva evolve from a design tool to a system where teams do all their work from start to finish. These additions extend Canva’s capabilities across your entire workflow, from early ideas to campaign scaling and measurement.

The Simtheory platform helps teams use AI to build assistants that understand their business, work across tools, and handle real-world tasks. Simtheory allows teams to apply state-of-the-art models across diverse use cases and set up agent workflows tailored to their needs.

Ortto, on the other hand, combines a customer data platform with marketing automation, allowing teams to design and run journeys across email, SMS, IM, in-app messaging, forms and surveys in one system. Canva says its event-driven architecture and no-code integrations make it easy to connect and activate data in real time. The platform is used by more than 11,000 customers in 190 countries.

“Simtheory accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design and productivity tools at its core,” Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht said in a press release. “At the same time, Ortto is enhancing our ability to support the entire marketing and content lifecycle with Canva Grow, from planning and creative to publishing and optimization across every channel.”

Canva Grow is the company’s tool for asset creation and performance measurement.

These latest acquisitions come at a time when Canva has been on an acquisition spree. Two weeks ago, the company acquired outdoor digital advertising startup Doohly. Six weeks ago, Canva announced the dual acquisition of animation startups Cavalry, and MangoAI, which improves ad performance. Before that, Canva acquired marketing intelligence startup MagicBrief in January 2025.

Canva finished 2025 with annual revenue of $4 billion with more than 265 million users and 31 million paid users. The company also saw a 20% increase in monthly active users.