Canva has announced it’s acquired two companies with the first being Simtheory – an AI workspace platform and the second being Ortto – a marketing automation company. Canva has stated these acquisitions will bring “powerful agentic AI and complete marketing automation to our growing platform.”
Simtheory is an AI workspace and collaboration platform for building custom agents and Canva states, “Simtheory accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI tools, to an AI platform with design and productivity tools at its core.”
Ortto is a customer data and marketing automation company and Canva states, “Ortto strengthens our growing suite of marketing products.” Canva added that the acquisition of these two companies is part of its “continued investment in powerful AI and marketing automation.”
Both Simtheory and Ortto were founded by brothers Chris and Mike Sharkey, previously co-founders of Stayz, which was acquired by Fairfax Media. They have now joined Canva in leadership roles across its AI and marketing technology teams.
Canva stated its goal has always been to help the community achieve its goals with as little friction as possible. “We’ve spent the last decade helping millions of teams and individuals to bring their ideas to life, and now, we’re excited to take it a step further as we welcome Simtheory and Ortto to the team.”
Simtheory: AI workflows all in one place
The explosion of AI tools has made it easier than ever to get started, but generating something is one step in a bigger process. For many teams, bringing an idea to life can be complex. Simtheory states that it was built to solve this issue.
Simtheory states its platform makes it easier for teams to think and work with AI, enabling them to build assistants that understand their business, collaborate across tasks and tools, and take on real work with the control and reliability enterprises need. “It’s the kind of system that gives teams real confidence in AI, and it’s quickly built a strong following,” the company stated.
Canva stated, “Bringing Simtheory into Canva accelerates our evolution into the system where work happens start to finish, and where AI becomes a powerful partner to help move you from an idea to a finished output.”
Ortto: the full marketing lifecycle now connected
Often, for today’s marketing teams, launching a campaign means juggling data, content, channels, and performance across disconnected tools. Too often, this means spending more time coordinating than creating.
Ortto has stated it was designed to solve this by bringing everything into one place. The Ortto platform combines customer data with end-to-end marketing automation, from email and SMS to push notifications, in-app messaging, forms, and surveys, making it straightforward to reach the right people at the right moment without the usual back-and-forth between systems. The platform is currently used by over 11,000 customers across 190 countries.
Canva stated, “Bringing Ortto into Canva supercharges our vision to power the entire marketing and content lifecycle, from the spark of an idea through to creating, publishing, measuring, and optimising content in one place. It strengthens our growing suite of marketing products, building on recent acquisitions including MagicBrief, MangoAI, and Doohly.”
Building toward something bigger
Canva stated, “These acquisitions reflect something we’ve believed for a long time: the best work happens when everything is connected and working together, not just the parts that are easiest to see.”
Canva held an event last week to unveil all of these changes so that Canva customers worldwide are up-to-date with what’s happening at Canva and how it may assist them.
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