Key Takeaways:
- Canva’s acquisition of Simtheory and Ortto enhances its AI capabilities, enabling end-to-end marketing lifecycle management.
- The move positions Canva as a leader in AI-driven marketing automation, integrating design, collaboration, and customer data tools.
Canva has acquired Simtheory, an artificial intelligence (AI) workspace and collaboration platform for building custom agents, and Ortto, a customer data and marketing automation company, as part of its continued investment in powerful AI and marketing automation.
Cliff Obrecht, Co-Founder and Chief Operations Officer at Canva, said Simtheory accelerates their evolution from a design platform with AI tools, to an AI platform with design and productivity tools at its core. Ortto is seen as strengthening their ability to power the entire marketing and content lifecycle through Canva Grow, from planning and creating to publishing and optimising across every channel.
Why the Simtheory and Ortto Purchase
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.
“[Simtheory and Ortto] 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 Obrecht in a statement.
AI Platform
With AI making it easier than ever to get started, generating something is only one step in a much bigger process. For most workers, bringing an idea to life is still too complex and disconnected, spread across too many tools, tabs, and workflows.
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.
Ortto combines a customer data platform with powerful 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 personalized and effective campaigns at scale. The platform has more than 11,000 customers across 190 countries.
Canva’s Growth Plan
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.”
