Days before the annual Create keynote, worksuite and artificial intelligence (AI) platform Canva has detailed two more acquisitions which should add more capabilities for enterprise workflows. The company confirms the acquisitions of agentic workplace Simtheory, as well as data and marketing automation company Ortto. Both Australian tech companies will add to Canva’s arsenal of tools, and marks another chapter in a sharpened focus on enterprise workflows.
“We’re excited to welcome Simtheory and Ortto to Canva. They’ve built exceptional teams and technology, and this acquisition marks an important step toward evolving Canva from a design tool into the system where work happens end-to-end, whether it’s a quick idea or a full campaign,” said Cliff Obrecht, co-founder and chief operations officer at Canva.
The financial terms of either deal haven’t been made public yet, but the addition of new capabilities based on the expertise inherited via both tech companies, will be made available to Canva’s 265 million monthly active users in the coming weeks. Some significant feature announcements are expected at the company’s Create keynote, next week.
The Simtheory and Ortto acquisitions follow MangoAI and Cavalry, which arrived within Canva’s fold earlier in the year. This strengthens Canva’s AI stack, as it competes with Adobe’s popular Creative Cloud suite and apps, as well as Apple’s Creator Studio. Late last year, Canva had detailed the direction of a strengthened AI stack, with the Creative OS.
Obrecht explains what the acquisitions mean for Canva. “Simtheory accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design and productivity tools at its core. Ortto strengthens our ability to power the entire marketing and content life-cycle through Canva Grow, from planning and creating to publishing and optimising across every channel,” he says.
Both companies were founded by Chris and Mike Sharkey, who will now join Canva in leadership roles across the company’s AI and marketing technology teams.
The Simtheory deal in particular, has a much more visible significance for Canva. The feature set, when it is finally implemented in the Canva suite, should allow teams to build AI agents that are trained on the company data as well as troves of knowledge, and orchestrate multistep workflows, as well as switch between frontier models without lock-in. This is expected to provide a foundation for Canva’s next big evolution, as it evolves from a design-focused platform with AI tools to, an AI-led platform that focuses on design and productivity.
Obrecht points to the continuity of intention, citing recent deals for MagicBrief, MangoAI and Doohly. “We’ve only scratched the surface of the opportunity here,” he adds. Canva’s intention is to complete the chain that teams and workflows usually grapple with — from brief to creation, to distribution and assessing performance, with a significant AI layer to assist at each step.
