Canva announced the acquisitions of Simtheory and Ortto as part of its strategy to expand artificial intelligence and marketing capabilities across its platform.
The acquisitions bring together complementary technologies spanning agentic AI, customer data infrastructure, marketing automation, and customer engagement. Canva aims to evolve beyond a design tool into a comprehensive platform where teams can manage the full workflow from ideation through campaign execution, measurement, and optimization.
Simtheory provides AI collaboration and agent management capabilities, enabling teams to build AI assistants that can perform tasks across workflows and applications. The platform is designed to help organizations move beyond simple AI-generated outputs to more advanced, execution-driven use cases.
Ortto adds customer data and marketing automation functionality, allowing teams to orchestrate campaigns across multiple channels, including email, SMS, push notifications, and in-app messaging. Its event-driven architecture and no-code integrations enable real-time activation of customer data, supporting more personalized and scalable marketing efforts.
The founders of both companies, Chris Sharkey and Mike Sharkey, will join Canva in leadership roles focused on AI and marketing technology. The acquisitions also build on Canva’s recent expansion efforts, including additions such as MagicBrief, MangoAI, and Doohly, as it continues to broaden its product ecosystem.
With more than 265 million monthly users globally, Canva is positioning itself as an end-to-end platform that integrates creation, collaboration, and execution, supported by AI-driven tools. The company is expected to unveil further developments at its upcoming Canva Create event on April 16.
KEY QUOTES:
“We’re excited to welcome Simtheory and Ortto to Canva. They’ve built exceptional teams and technology, and this acquisition marks an important step toward evolving Canva from a design tool into the system where work happens end to end, whether it’s a quick idea or a full campaign.”
“Simtheory accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design and productivity tools at its core. We’re excited to share some of our early work together at Canva Create on April 16, where we’ll unveil the biggest transformation in Canva’s history, reimagining the process of creation, just as we did a decade ago. At the same time, Ortto strengthens our ability to power the entire marketing and content lifecycle through Canva Grow, from planning and creating to publishing and optimising across every channel. This builds on our recent acquisitions of MagicBrief, MangoAI and Doohly, and we’ve only scratched the surface of the opportunity here.”
Cliff Obrecht, Co-Founder And Chief Operations Officer, Canva
“We’re thrilled to be joining Canva. The opportunity to bring our technology to the quarter of a billion people using Canva every month and to help more people make the most of AI in their everyday work is incredibly exciting to us. It’s rare to find such strong alignment in mission and values.”
“From day one, we’ve been working to make complex things simple with both Simtheory and Ortto, and we can’t wait to continue doing that on an even larger scale as part of Canva.”
Mike Sharkey, Co-Founder And Chief Executive Officer, Ortto And Simtheory
