Australian design platform Canva has 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. The acquisitions, announced on Wednesday, are part of Canva's continued investment in artificial intelligence and marketing infrastructure.
Both acquired companies were founded by brothers Chris and Mike Sharkey, previously founders of vacation rental service Stayz, which was acquired by Fairfax Media. The pair will join Canva in leadership roles across the company’s AI and marketing technology teams.
Extending the workflow from design to delivery
Canva stated the purchases add strengths in agentic AI, data infrastructure, marketing automation, and customer engagement. The goal is to help Canva evolve from a design tool into a comprehensive system where teams can manage their entire workflow from start to finish. "Simtheory accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design and productivity tools at its core," said Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht.
Obrecht added that "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." Canva Grow is the company’s existing tool for asset creation and performance measurement.
Capabilities of the new acquisitions
Simtheory's platform is designed to help teams build AI assistants that understand their specific business context, work across various tools, and handle real-world tasks. It allows for the application of the latest AI models across diverse use cases and the setup of tailored agentic workflows.
Ortto, on the other hand, combines a customer data platform with marketing automation. It enables teams to design and run customer journeys across email, SMS, push notifications, in-app messaging, forms, and surveys within a single system. The platform, noted for its event-driven architecture and no-code integrations, is used by more than 11,000 customers in 190 countries.
Part of a sustained acquisition strategy
These latest acquisitions continue a period of aggressive expansion for Canva. Just two weeks prior, the company acquired digital outdoor advertising startup Doohly. Six weeks earlier, Canva announced the dual acquisition of animation startup Cavalry and ad performance startup MangoAI. This followed the purchase of marketing intelligence startup MagicBrief in January 2025.
The company closed the 2025 financial year with $4 billion in annualized revenue and reported having more than 265 million users, including 31 million paid subscribers. Canva also noted a 20% increase in monthly active users.