Canva announced the acquisitions of Simtheory, an AI collaboration platform, and Ortto, a marketing automation company, on April 8, 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed. Founders Chris and Mike Sharkey will join Canva's leadership, enhancing AI and marketing capabilities. These moves aim to transform Canva from a design tool into a comprehensive work system for teams, covering workflows from ideation to campaign measurement.
Simtheory enables teams to build AI assistants that integrate with business tools and automate tasks. Ortto offers a customer data platform combined with marketing automation, supporting email, SMS, push notifications, and surveys. Ortto’s platform serves over 11,000 customers in 190 countries and features real-time data activation with no-code integrations.
For the AECM industry, these acquisitions signal Canva’s push to integrate AI-driven productivity and customer engagement tools into design and marketing workflows. This could streamline project communications, marketing campaigns, and client interactions, improving efficiency and data-driven decision-making. Enhanced automation and AI agents may reduce manual tasks for project managers and marketing teams.
Canva plans to integrate these technologies into Canva Grow, its marketing and content lifecycle tool, enhancing asset creation and performance analytics. Upcoming milestones include the full integration of Simtheory and Ortto into Canva’s platform and expanded AI capabilities across design and marketing by late 2026.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/08/canva-doubles-down-on-ai-and-marketing-automation-with-simtheory-ortto-acquisitions/. Read the original story →
