Canva is buying martech tools
Canva is expanding beyond design into marketing automation by acquiring Simtheory and Ortto, signalling a push to be a one-stop creative-and-execution platform. This matters because it shifts employer expectations: design work will increasingly live inside campaign flows and customer-data systems rather than just isolated assets. The move is explicitly framed as part of a broader “creative OS” strategy and will be highlighted again at Canva Create on April 16. (martech.org)
Canva just bought two companies that sit far closer to the “send the campaign” button than the “make the graphic” button. On April 8, Canva said it acquired Simtheory, an artificial intelligence agent-management platform, and Ortto, a customer-data and marketing-automation company. (canva.com) Ortto is the easier one to picture. It is software for storing customer data, segmenting audiences, sending messages, and measuring what happened after an email, text, or campaign goes out. (ortto.com) Simtheory sits one step earlier in the chain. Canva describes it as an artificial intelligence collaboration and agent-management platform, which means software teams can set up automated helpers to do repeatable work across tools and workflows. (canva.com) Put those two together and Canva is no longer just trying to help a team make an ad, a deck, or a social post. It is trying to own the path from first draft to audience targeting to campaign delivery to performance tracking. (canva.com) Canva said the deals are part of a push to power “the full workflow from early ideas through to campaign scaling and measurement.” That is the language of a work platform, not a design app. (businesswire.com) This has been building for months. In October 2025, Canva launched what it called a “Creative Operating System,” promising one place for design, collaboration, publishing, and performance instead of a chain of separate tools. (businesswire.com) That helps explain why Canva bought a customer-data platform instead of another photo editor. If your software already makes the email, the landing page, and the presentation, the next obvious business is sending them to the right people and showing which version worked. (ortto.com, businesswire.com) The founders matter here too. Chris Sharkey and Mike Sharkey built both Simtheory and Ortto, and Canva said both will join in leadership roles across its artificial intelligence and marketing-technology teams after the acquisitions. (businesswire.com) The timing is not random. Canva Create, the company’s annual product event, is scheduled for April 16, 2026, at Hollywood Park in Los Angeles, and Canva is already teasing major product reveals there. (canva.com, canva.com) So the likely pitch next week is not “here are new templates.” It is “stay inside Canva from brainstorm to launch,” with artificial intelligence agents handling workflow steps and Ortto-style automation handling the customer side after the creative is finished. That would put Canva into more direct competition with marketing suites that have traditionally lived outside design software. (canva.com, martech.org)
