Canva declared on Wednesday the dual acquisition of Simtheory, an AI collaboration and agent management platform, and Ortto, a customer data and marketing automation corporation. The financial terms of the deals were not disclosed. Canva says the acquisitions are part of its continued investment in AI and marketing infrastructure. 

Both companies were founded by Chris and Mike Sharkey, previously founders of vacation rental service Stayz, which was acquired by Fairfax Media. The pair will join Canva in leadership roles across the company’s AI and marketing innovation teams.

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’s capabilities across the full workflow, from early ideas to campaign scaling and measurement.

Simtheory’s platform helps teams employ AI to build assistants that understand their business, work across tools, and handle real tasks. Simtheory lets teams apply the latest models across diverse apply cases and set up agentic workflows tailored to their needs. This also touches on aspects of software update.

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 construct 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. Furthermore, experts in software update note the continued relevance.

“Simtheory accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design and productivity tools at its core,” commented Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht, in a press release. “At 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.”

Canva Grow is the company’s tool for asset creation and performance measurement.

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