Canva buys AI and martech

Canva just bought two companies that sit on opposite ends of a marketing campaign: one helps teams build artificial intelligence agents, and the other helps teams send emails, score leads, and track customer behavior. Put together, that turns Canva from a place where you make the ad into a place where you can also run and measure it. (canva.com) The deals were announced on April 8, 2026, and Canva said it will show “early work” from the acquisitions at Canva Create on April 16 in Los Angeles. Canva’s event page says the keynote will stream online for free, while in-person tickets cost $395. (canva.com 1) (canva.com 2) Simtheory is the artificial intelligence piece. Canva describes it as a workspace for building custom agents, which means software helpers that can carry out tasks across tools instead of only generating text or images. (canva.com) (businesswire.com) Ortto is the marketing software piece. It sells customer data and marketing automation tools, the kind companies use to decide who gets which message, on which channel, and when. (canva.com) (techcrunch.com) Canva already had a product called Canva Grow aimed at marketers. In the acquisition announcement, Canva said Ortto will strengthen Canva Grow across planning, creating, publishing, and optimizing campaigns “across every channel.” (morningstar.com) (canva.com) That fills in a gap Canva has had for years. Canva became huge by making design simple for non-designers, but marketing teams usually still had to leave Canva and jump into separate systems for email, customer databases, campaign triggers, and reporting. (techcrunch.com) (thenextweb.com) The founders matter here too. Simtheory and Ortto were both built by brothers Chris Sharkey and Mike Sharkey, and Canva said both will join in leadership roles across its artificial intelligence and marketing technology teams. (businesswire.com) (thenextweb.com) Canva did not disclose the price. That fits its pattern: Startup Daily reported these are Canva’s fourth and fifth acquisitions of 2026, and Canva has been buying pieces that push it beyond templates and into workplace software. (startupdaily.net) (smartcompany.com.au) The competition is no longer just Adobe. When a design tool adds customer data, automation, and agents that can act on that data, it starts drifting toward the territory of HubSpot, Salesforce, and other systems that sit closer to revenue than to graphics. (marketing-interactive.com) (globalbusinessline.com) If Canva can connect creative work, campaign launch, and performance tracking in one product, it gives small teams the kind of setup that used to require a stack of separate tools. April 16 is when Canva says it will show how much of that vision is real now, and how much is still a promise. (canva.com 1) (canva.com 2)