Canva has acquired Sydney-founded startups Simtheory, and Ortto, adding more AI and marketing technology to its growing product stack as the company continues to expand beyond design into workflow, automation and campaign tools.
The deals, announced ahead of Canva Create on 16 April, bring in AI collaboration software from Simtheory and customer data and marketing automation capabilities from Ortto.
Canva said the acquisitions will help it support more of the process from early ideation through to campaign delivery, measurement and optimisation.
Both businesses were founded by brothers Chris Sharkey and Mike Sharkey, who previously co-founded Stayz. The pair will join Canva in leadership roles spanning its AI and marketing technology teams.
Cliff Obrecht, co-founder and chief operating officer at Canva, said the acquisitions were part of a broader shift in the company’s strategy.
“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,” he said.
Canva founders – Cliff Obrecht, Cameron Adams and Melanie Perkins
More than a design play
The Simtheory deal gives Canva greater capabilities in agentic AI and enterprise collaboration at a time when software companies are racing to build tools that do more than just generate content. Canva said Simtheory’s platform helps teams build AI assistants that can work across apps, tasks and business processes.
Ortto adds a different layer. Its platform combines customer data with marketing automation across email, SMS, push notifications, in-app messaging, forms and surveys, and Canva said the product will continue to be supported while its team contributes to Canva Grow.
The acquisition also builds on Canva’s recent deal run, following moves for MagicBrief, MangoAI and Doohly. The company said Ortto is used by more than 11,000 customers across 190 countries, while Canva itself now says it serves more than 265 million monthly users.
IPO still has no date
The obvious question is whether this kind of buying spree is laying the groundwork for a long-awaited IPO. For now, the answer is still: not yet.
Canva has not announced a listing date or filed for an IPO. In April 2025, chief executive Melanie Perkins said an IPO was still “on the horizon” but that there was “no news” to share, and later in 2025, Obrecht said a Nasdaq listing made more sense than the ASX whenever Canva eventually goes public.
That has not stopped the speculation. Canva launched an employee share sale in August 2025 that valued the company at $US42 billion, and Reuters reported at the time that the transaction came ahead of a widely discussed float. But there is still no official timetable, which means the listing remains a matter of if and when, not when exactly.
Canva grows while others cut
The timing is notable in the context of the broader local tech market. While Canva is using acquisitions to build out its AI and marketing capabilities, Atlassian moved in the opposite direction in March, cutting about 1,600 jobs globally, including roughly 480 in Australia, as it redirected spending towards AI and enterprise sales.
That distinction matters. Atlassian’s move was publicly framed as an AI-driven restructuring rather than a simple expansion of its AI teams, with chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes saying it would be “disingenuous” to pretend that AI was not changing the mix of skills and the number of roles the company needs.
For Canva, the strategy appears more additive. The company ended 2025 with 260 million monthly users and $3.5 billion in revenue, and these latest acquisitions suggest it wants to keep broadening the platform before making any move to public markets.
Mike Sharkey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Ortto and Simtheory, said: “We’re thrilled to be joining Canva. The opportunity to bring our technology to the quarter of a billion people using Canva every month and to help more people make the most of AI in their everyday work is incredibly exciting to us.”
Top image: Chris & Mike Sharkey