Canva is doubling down on its AI and marketing ambitions, snapping up Simtheory and Ortto in a move that quietly shifts it from “just a design tool” to a full-on work and marketing platform.

The deal brings two very different but complementary products under Canva’s roof — both built by brothers Chris and Mike Sharkey, who previously founded Stayz, later acquired by Fairfax Media. The Sharkey brothers are not just cashing out; they’re joining Canva in leadership roles across AI and marketing tech, which is a strong signal that this isn’t a bolt‑on acquisition but a long‑term product bet.

So what’s actually changing? With Simtheory, Canva isn’t just adding another AI button — it’s buying an agentic AI workspace where teams can build custom AI agents, wire them into their tools, and let them handle real multi‑step work instead of one‑off prompts. Simtheory is built to support multiple models like Claude, GPT, Gemini, Mistral, and Grok in one place, with enterprise‑style control and security, so companies aren’t locked into a single AI vendor. Canva is framing this as the shift from a “design platform with AI tools” to an “AI platform with design and productivity at the core” — a pretty big mindset change.

On the other side, Ortto brings the plumbing that most marketing teams desperately need but hate to stitch together: a customer data platform plus marketing automation in a single product. It already powers journeys across email, SMS, push notifications, in‑app messages, forms, and surveys, all driven by event‑based, real‑time data and no‑code integrations. Ortto is used by more than 11,000 customers in 190 countries, which instantly gives Canva a deeper reach into serious marketing stacks, not just casual design users.

Put together, this is Canva quietly building an end‑to‑end marketing and content engine: you ideate, design, generate with AI, publish across channels, and then measure and optimize — without jumping between six different tools. Ortto will continue as a standalone product, but its tech is being pulled into Canva’s marketing offering (including Canva Grow), alongside other recent buys like MagicBrief, MangoAI, and Doohly, which cover creative strategy, AI, and digital signage workflows.

Strategically, this pushes Canva deeper into the territory of HubSpot, Braze, Klaviyo, and marketing clouds rather than just competing with Adobe and traditional design tools. For teams, the pitch is simple: instead of a designer living in Canva, a marketer in a separate CDP, and a growth team in yet another automation tool, Canva wants to be the system “where work happens” from first idea to campaign reporting.

Canva is also teasing that some of the first integrations with Simtheory — likely agentic workflows and AI‑driven campaign flows — will be showcased at Canva Create on April 16, which it’s calling “the biggest evolution in Canva’s history.” Expect more than cosmetic updates; this looks like the start of AI agents running inside Canva to plan, coordinate, and even execute chunks of marketing work rather than just helping you write a caption.

For everyday users, nothing breaks today — Canva still works as your usual design tool. But under the hood, this is Canva repositioning itself as an AI‑first workspace plus marketing platform, which means over the next year, you can expect more automated workflows, smarter campaign orchestration, and deeper data‑driven features baked directly into the Canva experience.