Canva Acquires Simtheory and Ortto to Expand AI & Marketing Capabilities
Simtheory accelerates Canva’s evolution from a design platform with AI tools into an AI platform with design and productivity at its core, while Ortto strengthens its growing suite of marketing products.
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Canva, the visual communication platform, has announced the acquisitions of Simtheory, an AI collaboration and agent management platform, and Ortto, a customer data and marketing automation company, as part of its continued investment in artificial intelligence and marketing infrastructure.
Together, the acquisitions bring complementary strengths across agentic AI, data infrastructure, marketing automation, and customer engagement, accelerating Canva’s ambition to move beyond a design tool and become the system where teams do all of their work from start to finish.
These additions will expand how Canva powers the full workflow from early ideas through to campaign scaling and measurement.
Both companies were founded by Chris and Mike Sharkey, previously founders of Stayz, which was acquired by Fairfax Media. They will join Canva in leadership roles across the company’s AI and marketing technology teams.
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“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,” said Cliff Obrecht, Co-Founder and Chief Operations Officer at Canva.
“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,” he added.
Simtheory: Every AI Workflow, One Platform
AI has made it easier than ever to get started, but generating something is only one step in a much bigger process. For most knowledge workers, bringing an idea to life is still too complex and disconnected, spread across too many tools, tabs, and workflows.
Simtheory was built to simplify that. Its platform enables teams to think and work with AI, making it easy to build assistants that understand their business, collaborate across tasks and apps, and take on real work with the control and reliability enterprises need.
Known for its work in AI-powered collaboration and multi-model systems, Simtheory allows teams to apply the latest models across a wide range of use cases and easily set up agentic systems that meet their needs. Since launching, it has quickly gained traction among teams exploring how AI can move beyond generation into execution.
The acquisition lays the groundwork for Canva’s evolution into a system where humans and AI collaborate to go from idea to finished product, which the company will unveil at Canva Create on April 16, 2026.
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Ortto: Powering the Marketing Lifecycle
Marketing teams today are expected to do more than ever. The average marketer is now creating, launching, and optimising campaigns across an expanding number of channels, often using fragmented tools and disconnected data. Ortto brings these workflows together.
Ortto combines a customer data platform with marketing automation, enabling teams to design and orchestrate journeys across email, SMS, push notifications, in-app messaging, forms, and surveys, all within a single system.
With an event-driven architecture and no-code integrations, Ortto makes it easy to connect and activate customer data in real time, helping teams deliver more personalised and effective campaigns at scale. The platform is trusted by more than 11,000 customers across 190 countries.
The acquisition strengthens Canva Grow and builds on Canva’s recent additions of MagicBrief, MangoAI, and Doohly, accelerating its ability to power the full marketing and content lifecycle, from ideation and creation through to deployment, measurement, and optimisation.
The Ortto team will continue to support and maintain the Ortto product while bringing their expertise to Canva Grow.
“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,” said Mike Sharkey, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ortto and Simtheory.
“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,” he added.
This announcement reflects Canva’s continued momentum and long-term focus on building a platform that supports every stage of the process of creation, now used by more than 265 million people each month.
