Canva Deepens AI and Marketing Push With Dual Acquisition of Simtheory and Ortto

New updates have been reported about Canva.

Canva has acquired AI collaboration platform Simtheory and marketing automation firm Ortto, extending its strategy to move from a design-centric tool to an AI-first, end-to-end marketing and workflow platform. While financial terms were not disclosed, both deals are framed as core to Canva’s long-term investment in agentic AI, data infrastructure, and marketing technology capabilities.

Founders Chris and Mike Sharkey, who previously built and exited vacation rental platform Stayz, will join Canva in senior roles across its AI and marketing tech teams, signaling a focus on integrating these assets into the company’s core roadmap rather than treating them as standalone add-ons. Simtheory will give Canva the ability to offer AI agents that understand a customer’s business context, integrate across tools, and execute complex workflows, positioning Canva to automate more of the creative and operational lifecycle for enterprise teams.

Ortto, which serves more than 11,000 customers in 190 countries, brings a combined customer data platform and omnichannel marketing automation stack that supports email, SMS, push, in-app messaging, forms, and surveys from a single system. Its event-driven architecture and no-code integrations are expected to strengthen Canva’s data activation and real-time personalization capabilities, especially inside Canva Grow, the company’s marketing and content lifecycle suite.

According to co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht, Simtheory helps shift Canva from a design platform with AI features to an AI platform with design and productivity at its core, while Ortto enhances Canva’s ability to manage the full marketing journey from planning and creation to distribution and optimization. These moves also deepen Canva’s defensibility in the enterprise and marketing segments by embedding AI agents and data-driven automation directly into the design workflow.

The acquisitions come amid an accelerated M&A program: in recent months Canva has bought outdoor ad platform Doohly, animation-focused Cavalry, ad performance startup MangoAI, and marketing intelligence provider MagicBrief. This roll-up strategy indicates a deliberate effort to build a vertically integrated marketing and advertising stack on top of Canva’s design base, which could increase average revenue per user and expand its role in customers’ tech stacks.

Canva ended 2025 with $4 billion in annualized revenue, more than 265 million users, and 31 million paying customers, alongside a 20% increase in monthly active users, giving it significant scale to monetize these new capabilities. For executives and investors, the key implications are that Canva is positioning itself as a central hub for AI-driven creative production and campaign orchestration, which may intensify competition with established marketing clouds while opening additional subscription and upsell opportunities across its fast-growing global user base.