Canva is pushing further beyond design software with a pair of acquisitions aimed at turning the company into a broader AI and marketing platform.
The company said it has acquired Simtheory, an AI collaboration and agent-management startup, and Ortto, a customer data and marketing automation company.
The financial terms were not disclosed and said Canva sees the deals as part of its continued investment in AI and marketing infrastructure.
Two deals, one bigger platform strategy
The acquisitions are tightly connected in Canva’s own telling.
In its announcement, the company said the two businesses bring complementary strengths across agentic AI, data infrastructure, marketing automation, and customer engagement, helping Canva move beyond a design tool and become the system where teams do all of their work from start to finish.
The additions extend Canva’s capabilities across the full workflow, from early ideas through campaign scaling and measurement.
Both companies were founded by Chris and Mike Sharkey, the brothers behind Australian vacation-rental business Stayz, which was later acquired by Fairfax Media.
Canva said the pair will join the company in leadership roles across its AI and marketing technology teams. That detail matters because the move is not just an acqui-hire for engineering talent or a narrow product pickup.
It suggests Canva is bringing in founders who will help shape how these tools are folded into the company’s next phase.
What Simtheory adds to Canva’s AI ambitions
Simtheory is the more overtly AI-focused of the two purchases.
TechCrunch described it as an AI collaboration and agent management platform, while Canva said the product helps teams build assistants that understand their business, collaborate across tasks and apps, and take on real work with the control and reliability enterprises need
Canva also said Simtheory has gained traction among teams trying to move AI beyond generation into execution, which suggests the company sees it as a way to push Canva from AI-assisted creation toward more agentic workflows.
Business Wire reported that Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht said Simtheory accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design and productivity tools at its core.
He added that Canva plans to show some of that early work at Canva Create on April 16, where the company says it will unveil the biggest transformation in Canva’s history.
That makes the acquisition feel less like a standalone deal and more like a setup for a larger product reveal.
Ortto brings customer data and campaign execution
Ortto fills a different gap. The platform combines a customer data platform with marketing automation, while Canva said it lets teams design and orchestrate journeys across email, SMS, push notifications, in-app messaging, forms, and surveys from one system.
The company added that Ortto’s event-driven architecture and no-code integrations help teams activate customer data in real time and that the platform is used by more than 11,000 customers across 190 countries.
That capability is expected to feed directly into Canva Grow, the company’s own tool for asset creation and performance measurement.
Obrecht said Ortto strengthens Canva’s ability to support the entire marketing and content lifecycle through Canva Grow, from planning and creating to publishing and optimizing across every channel.
Canva also said the Ortto team will continue supporting the existing Ortto product while bringing its expertise into Canva Grow.
Canva’s acquisition streak is speeding up
The double deal also fits a broader acquisition run.
Canva bought digital outdoor advertising startup Doohly just two weeks ago, and six weeks earlier announced another dual acquisition involving Cavalry and MangoAI.
Before that, it acquired marketing-intelligence startup MagicBrief in January 2025. The company closed 2025 at $4 billion in annualized revenue and now says it is used by more than 265 million people each month.
The larger signal is that Canva no longer wants to be seen only as a design app.
With Simtheory and Ortto, it is buying deeper capabilities in AI execution, customer data, and campaign automation at the same time.
That suggests the company believes the next battle in creative software will not be won by editing tools alone, but by owning more of the work that happens before, around, and after the design itself.
