Canva announced on Wednesday its double acquisition A theoryan AI collaboration and agent management platform and Orttoa customer data and marketing automation company. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed. Canva says the acquisitions are part of its ongoing investment in artificial intelligence and marketing infrastructure.
Both companies were founded by Chris and Mike Sharkey, previously founders of holiday rental service Stayz, which was acquired by Fairfax Media. The pair will join Canva in leadership roles in the company’s AI technology and marketing teams.
Canva says the acquisitions add advantages to agent AI, data infrastructure, marketing automation and customer engagement, helping Canva evolve from a design tool to a system where teams do all their work end-to-end. Add-ons extend Canva’s capabilities across the entire workflow, from first ideas to campaign scaling and measurement.
Simtheory’s platform helps teams use artificial intelligence to build assistants that understand their business, work on tools and handle real tasks. Simtheory enables teams to apply the latest models to various use cases and create agent workflows tailored to their needs.
On the other hand, Ortto combines a customer data platform with marketing automation, allowing teams to plan and execute journeys via email, SMS, push, in-app messaging, forms and surveys in one system. Its event-driven architecture and no-code integrations make it easy to connect and trigger real-time data, Canva says. The platform is used by more than 11,000 customers in 190 countries.
“Simtheory accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design and productivity tools at its core,” Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht said in a press release. “At the same time, Ortto enhances our ability to power the entire marketing and content lifecycle through Canva Grow, from design and creation to publishing and optimization across every channel.”
Canva Grow is the company’s tool for building assets and measuring performance.
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These latest acquisitions come as Canva is on a bit of an acquisition spree. Two weeks ago, the company acquired digital outdoor advertising startup Doohly. Six weeks ago, Canva announced its dual acquisition of startups Cavalrywhich works in cartoons and MangoAIwhich works to improve advertising performance. Before that, Canva acquired marketing intelligence startups MagicBrief in January 2025.
Canva closed 2025 with $4 billion in annual revenue with over 265 million users and 31 million paid users. The company also saw a 20% increase in monthly active users.
