On Wednesday, Canva announced the acquisition of Simtheory, an AI collaboration and agent management platform, and Ortto, a customer data and marketing automation company. The financial details of the transactions remain undisclosed. These acquisitions are aligned with Canva’s ongoing investment in AI and marketing infrastructure.
The founders of both companies, Chris and Mike Sharkey, who previously founded the vacation rental service Stayz, acquired by Fairfax Media, will join Canva’s leadership teams in AI and marketing technology.
Canva states that these acquisitions strengthen their capabilities in agentic AI, data infrastructure, marketing automation, and customer engagement, transforming Canva from a design tool to a comprehensive system for team workflows from start to finish. This move expands Canva’s functionality across the entire workflow, from ideation to campaign scaling and measurement.
Simtheory’s platform enables teams to leverage AI for creating business-aware assistants, capable of real tasks across various tools. It also facilitates the application of the latest models for diverse use cases, with tailored agentic workflows.
Ortto, on the other hand, integrates a customer data platform with marketing automation, allowing teams to craft and manage journeys via multiple channels including email, SMS, and in-app messaging in one place. Its architecture facilitates seamless real-time data integration, used by over 11,000 customers in 190 countries.
According to Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht, Simtheory accelerates Canva’s transformation towards an AI-centric platform, while Ortto bolsters Canva’s ability to manage the entire marketing and content lifecycle, from planning to optimization, through Canva Grow.
Canva Grow is designed for asset creation and performance measurement.
Recently, Canva has been actively acquiring other companies. They acquired the digital outdoor advertising startup Doohly two weeks ago and the startups Cavalry (animation) and MangoAI (ad performance) six weeks ago. In January 2025, Canva acquired marketing intelligence firm MagicBrief.
In 2025, Canva achieved $4 billion in annualized revenue with over 265 million users, including 31 million paid ones, and experienced a 20% increase in monthly active users.