{"id":388857,"date":"2026-04-08T23:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T23:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/388857\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T23:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T23:19:10","slug":"canva-doubles-down-on-ai-and-marketing-automation-with-simtheory-ortto-acquisitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/388857\/","title":{"rendered":"Canva doubles down on AI and marketing automation with Simtheory, Ortto acquisitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canva announced on Wednesday the dual acquisition of Simtheory<\/a>, an AI collaboration and agent management platform, and Ortto<\/a>, a customer data and marketing automation company. The financial terms of the deals were not disclosed. Canva says the acquisitions are part of its continued investment in AI and marketing infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both companies were founded by Chris and Mike Sharkey, previously founders of vacation rental service Stayz<\/a>, which was acquired by Fairfax Media. The pair will join Canva in leadership roles across the company\u2019s AI and marketing technology teams.<\/p>\n

Canva says the acquisitions add strengths in agentic AI, data infrastructure, marketing automation, and customer engagement, helping Canva evolve from a design tool into a system where teams do all of their work from start to finish. The additions extend Canva\u2019s capabilities across the full workflow, from early ideas to campaign scaling and measurement.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Simtheory<\/p>\n

Simtheory\u2019s platform helps teams use AI to build assistants that understand their business, work across tools, and handle real tasks. Simtheory lets teams apply the latest models across diverse use cases and set up agentic workflows tailored to their needs.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Ortto combines a customer data platform with marketing automation, letting teams design and run journeys across 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 activate data in real time, Canva says. The platform is used by more than 11,000 customers in 190 countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimtheory accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design and productivity tools at its core,\u201d said Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht, in a press release. \u201cAt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Ortto<\/p>\n

Canva Grow is the company\u2019s tool for asset creation and performance measurement. <\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

These latest acquisitions come as Canva has been on a bit of an acquisition spree. Two weeks ago, the company acquired digital outdoor advertising startup Doohly. Six weeks ago, Canva announced the dual acquisition<\/a> of startups Cavalry<\/a>, which works on animation, and MangoAI<\/a>, which works on improving ad performance.\u00a0Before that, Canva acquired marketing intelligence startup MagicBrief<\/a> in January 2025.<\/p>\n

Canva closed\u00a02025 at $4 billion in annualized revenue<\/a>\u00a0with more than 265 million users and 31 million paid users. The company also saw a 20% increase in monthly active users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canva announced on Wednesday the dual acquisition of Simtheory, an AI collaboration and agent management platform, and Ortto,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,68239,61,60,1951,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-388857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-canva","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-mergers-and-acquisitions","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}