Sydney design company Canva has acquired AI agent platform Simtheory and marketing automation business Ortto, announcing the deals in April 2026. They bring Canva to five acquisitions in the first four months of 2026 and eight in a little over two years.
The buying spree shows where Canva wants to go next. Co-founder and chief operating officer Cliff Obrecht said Simtheory “accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform”, according to TechCrunch. Canva closed 2025 at US$4 billion in annualised revenue, with more than 265 million users and 31 million paying users, TechCrunch reported.
The deals
Simtheory helps teams build AI assistants that understand their business and carry out tasks across their software. Ortto combines a customer data platform with marketing automation across email, SMS, push and in-app messaging, and has more than 11,000 customers in 190 countries. Both were co-founded by Chris and Mike Sharkey, who previously founded holiday rental site Stayz. The pair will take leadership roles across Canva’s AI and marketing technology teams. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Obrecht said Ortto would strengthen Canva’s ability to “power the entire marketing and content lifecycle” through its Canva Grow product.
The pattern
The April deals followed three earlier acquisitions in 2026: animation tool Cavalry and ad performance startup MangoAI in February, and digital outdoor advertising platform Doohly in March, reportedly for around $30 million. Canva bought marketing intelligence startup MagicBrief in January 2025, and before that UK design software maker Affinity and Sydney generative AI company Leonardo.ai in 2024.
Most of the recent targets sit in marketing, advertising and AI rather than core design tools, which points to Canva competing for a bigger share of company marketing budgets.
The IPO
Obrecht has confirmed Canva is now working towards an IPO in 2027, Capital Brief reported. He said the company was IPO ready, but wanted its shift from feature-based subscription tiers to AI credit-based pricing “bedded in” first, so it would not have to explain itself to the market during a transition. Canva grew 40 per cent last year and has been profitable for nine years, according to Capital Brief.
Jack’s take
Most people still think of Canva as a design app, and that view is already a year out of date. Eight acquisitions, mostly in AI and marketing, plus a pricing overhaul before listing, describes a very different company from the one that made social media templates easy. Waiting until 2027 to list looks like a sensible call.