Canva is tightening its grip on the future of creative work — and it’s doing so by expanding far beyond design.
The company announced Wednesday it has acquired Simtheory, an AI collaboration and agent management platform, alongside Ortto, a customer data and marketing automation business. While financial details remain undisclosed, the intent is clear: Canva is building a unified ecosystem where creation, execution, and performance all live under one roof.
Both companies share a common origin story. Founders Chris and Mike Sharkey — previously behind the holiday rental platform Stayz — will now step into leadership roles within Canva, shaping its AI and marketing technology strategy. That continuity matters. Founders who understand both product and scale often accelerate integration and innovation.
At the centre of these deals sits a broader ambition. Canva no longer wants to be just the place where ideas begin. It wants to own the entire workflow — from concept to campaign, from execution to measurement.
Simtheory plays a critical role in that vision. Its platform enables teams to build AI assistants tailored to their business, capable of working across tools and handling real tasks. Think less generic AI, more embedded intelligence that understands context. For a marketing team, that could mean automating campaign drafts, analysing performance data, or coordinating workflows without constant human input.
Ortto, meanwhile, tackles a different but equally important layer: customer engagement. Its platform blends customer data with marketing automation, allowing teams to design and manage campaigns across multiple channels — email, SMS, push notifications, in-app messaging — all within a single system. With more than 11,000 customers across 190 countries, Ortto brings both scale and proven infrastructure.
The strategic overlap is deliberate. One tool powers intelligent creation, the other ensures that output reaches the right audience at the right time — and adapts based on performance.
“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. “At the same time, 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.”
That lifecycle is increasingly where competition is heading. Businesses no longer want fragmented tools for design, automation, analytics, and distribution. They want systems that connect the dots. Canva’s answer is Canva Grow — its in-house platform for asset creation and performance tracking — now significantly strengthened by these acquisitions.
Recent moves show this is no one-off expansion. Canva has been assembling capabilities at pace:
• Doohly, focused on digital outdoor advertising
• Cavalry, specialising in animation
• MangoAI, aimed at improving ad performance
• MagicBrief, centred on marketing intelligence
Each addition fills a gap in the broader marketing stack. Together, they form a clear pattern: Canva is positioning itself as an end-to-end operating system for modern marketing teams.
The numbers suggest it has the scale to pull it off. The company closed 2025 with $4 billion in annualised revenue, more than 265 million users, and 31 million paying customers. Monthly active users also climbed by 20%, signalling continued momentum.
The question now shifts from growth to integration. Can Canva seamlessly connect AI agents, customer data, creative tools, and distribution channels into one coherent experience? If it succeeds, it won’t just simplify workflows — it could redefine how teams approach marketing altogether.
For businesses juggling multiple platforms today, the appeal is obvious. Fewer tools, less friction, faster execution. But it also raises a strategic consideration: when one platform controls the entire pipeline, how much flexibility are teams willing to trade for convenience?
Author: George Nathan Dulnuan