Canva announced the acquisitions of Simtheory and Ortto to expand its AI and marketing infrastructure, transforming Canva from a design tool into a full end-to-end workflow platform.

Canva Grow, the company’s asset creation and performance-measurement tool, will be enhanced by these acquisitions to support the entire lifecycle from ideation to campaign measurement.

The acquisitions are described as complementary in AI, data infrastructure, marketing automation, and customer engagement, reinforcing Canva Grow and the broader goal of enabling ideation, creation, deployment, and optimization across the marketing and content lifecycle.

The announcements set the stage ahead of Canva Create on April 16 and come as Canva reaches over 265 million users per month.

Canva closed 2025 with about $4 billion in annualized revenue, more than 265 million users, 31 million paid users, and a 20% rise in monthly active users, underscoring rapid growth that justifies expanding into AI and marketing infrastructure.

Canva points to ongoing momentum with prior additions like MagicBrief, MangoAI, and Doohly, highlighting a pattern of expanding beyond design into ideation, creation, deployment, measurement, and optimization.

The founders Chris and Mike Sharkey will join Canva in leadership roles within the AI and marketing technology teams.

Ortto will bring real-time data activation, multi-channel marketing automation (email, SMS, push, in-app messaging, forms, surveys) and a no-code integration framework to power Canva Grow from planning to optimization.

Ortto, a customer data platform and marketing automation solution serving over 11,000 customers in 190 countries, unifies data and workflows to orchestrate customer journeys across channels.

Canva has been on an acquisitions spree recently, adding Doohly, Cavalry, MangoAI, and MagicBrief to expand capabilities beyond design into advertising, animation, marketing intelligence, and ad performance.

Simtheory will contribute agentic AI capabilities, multi-tool task handling, and customizable workflows aligned with business needs.