HOT TAKE: Canva Shakes Up MarTech Market with 2 AI and Automation Picks Ups

Canva has made it clear: it is ready to shake up marketing technology, especially for the small to midsize business market. Already known as a disruptor in visual communications and creative, Canva has announced the pickup of two companies: Simtheory (an AI agent management and collaboration platform) and Ortto (a customer data platform (CDP) and marketing automation play).

For Canva this is the continuation of an acquisition and innovation cycle that includes three additional pick-ups across 2025: MagicBrief, MangoAI and Doohly. When you look at all 5 acquisitions through one lens, there can only be one conclusion: Canva is unapologetically marching in with a platform to power a very different idea of work and of engagement, and they don’t really care to do it based on any competitor’s playbook.

What We Know About the Deal(s): Simtheory, founded in 2023 and headquartered in Sydney, Australia, is more than a collaborative AI powered workspace. It is billed as a “safe space” where teams can think with AI and then build agents and assistants that are grounded in business knowledge, ready to be put to work. The key here is giving AI the access to data, delivering the business context AI needs to actually work autonomously. The challenge today is that far too often AI is just a chatbot, generating answers from data it can query as opposed to being a fully provisioned worker accessing business data and business context it needs to analyze, to reason and to take action. From Simtheory’s own website: “That’s the difference between answering questions and getting work done.”

Ortto, also headquartered in Sydney, Australia, is billed as a Marketing Automation platform and comprehensive CDP. But truth be told, it is unfair and rather limiting to call Ortto a Marketing Automation platform considering just how much of a customer’s experience this offering can predict, product and provide. Beyond marketing capabilities, Ortto powers service engagements with a solid customer support toolkit, connecting support conversations, sales journeys and marketing communications in a single data and engagement platform. As a CDP-centric (eg: not CRM centric) engagement platform, service can access a comprehensive data resource, while marketing and sales can access customer voice for a deeper understanding of opportunities and leads.

Financials have not been disclosed on the two acquisitions, but checks don’t need to travel very far as both Simtheory and Ortto were co-founded by Michael and Chris Sharkey, brothers who prove you can have business, marketing and technology coexist. The start of their entrepreneurial success was arguably their earlie days growing an AU-based vacation rental success, Stayz, which was acquired by Fairfax Media. According to the announcement, the brothers will be joining Canva in leadership positions across AI and marketing technology teams.

What Makes This So Interesting? Canva is in an almost constant state of reimagination, starting as the creative disruptor out to “democratize” design, even for those with little to no design skill or experience. It’s no accident that Canva often invokes a language centered around wishes and magic: Canva takes in all their customer’s wishes so their people can build magic. Canva has evolved into a creative engagement platform for traditional and non-traditional engagement centers. While others in the creative space sought to democratize access to the tools, Canva always seemed interested in freeing something else: Canva has always wanted to bring tools capable of democratizing the work.

They have clearly been hearing from their customers that the work might be the bigger problem to tackle. The work of engagement, especially at a midmarket, high-growth company, is hard on good days while feeling impossible on others. When you are riding a unicorn, work means you are collaborating in the middle of an avalanche without safety equipment or luxury gear. You are holding on, throwing every idea into the room, and tapping every opportunity to bring AI into the mix to offload anything that makes sense for the business.

That’s what makes these acquisitions so interesting. They point to another evolution for Canva. But this evolution will be filled with data, workflows, automations and AI. This evolution will be about the work…and if Canva stays true to their roots and culture, that work won’t be dull or traditional. In fact, it will probably throw the “Future of Work” playbook of digitization, modernization and autonomy out the window in favor of something that feels familiar for CX leaders but somehow remixed, recolored and all together easier to carry. Work, for Canva, becomes the wish.

Parting Thoughts: Canva is building something, and it isn’t being built in anyone else’s image of what marketing, engagement or even creativity should be. They noted that the news came just ahead of Canva Create, where Canva will “unveil its next major step forward, and the biggest evolution in its history, as it reimagines how the world creates.” The opportunity Canva is building for itself is a means to challenge and change the work of engagement. It is an opportunity to not be held back by technology assumptions that say big categories and traditional constructs still hold power in today’s age of AI and authority. Instead, centered on design and empowered by customer data, a new model of work and a new, easier, more magical engagement model can take shape. This puts players like Hubspot, Klaviyo or Salesforce on notice that a new, more colorful, more creative and more magical player has entered the chat.