Canva acquired Ortto, a Sydney-founded customer data and marketing automation company with more than 11,000 customers in 190 countries, the Australian design company announced on April 8, 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Canva bought Ortto in the same announcement as Simtheory, an AI agent platform. Both companies were founded by brothers Chris and Mike Sharkey, who will take leadership roles across Canva's AI and marketing technology teams.
Ortto's team will continue to support the existing Ortto product while adding its technology to Canva Grow, Canva's marketing product. CMSWire reported that Ortto would stay a standalone platform for now, with the same accounts, pricing, workflows and support team.
What Ortto built
Ortto combines a customer data platform with marketing automation. Businesses use it to collect data about their customers and then send messages by email, SMS, push notification and in-app messaging, as well as run forms and surveys.
The product is built on an event-driven architecture with no-code integrations, which lets marketers act on customer behaviour as it happens rather than in scheduled batches. Canva said the platform is used by more than 11,000 customers in 190 countries.
The company was previously called Autopilot and was known for marketing automation software before it renamed itself Ortto, a phonetic spelling of auto, and widened its product to include customer data.
CMSWire reported that Ortto's founders told customers that day-to-day operations would not change after the deal, and that Ortto would eventually fold into Canva Grow. Canva did not give a date for that.
“From day one, we've been working to make complex things simple with both Simtheory and Ortto, and we can't wait to continue doing that on an even larger scale as part of Canva.”
The founders and the funding
Chris and Mike Sharkey previously co-founded Stayz, which they sold to Fairfax Media. Blackbird's portfolio page lists Michael, Chris and Peter Sharkey as founders of Ortto. Mike Sharkey was chief executive of both Ortto and Simtheory at the time of the deal.
In June 2017 Autopilot raised $12 million in a round led by Blackbird Ventures, with existing investors Rembrandt Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures and Southern Cross Venture Partners taking part. The company said at the time that the round brought its total funding to $32 million.
Capital Brief reported that before the deal Ortto had raised A$46 million (about $32 million) from investors including Salesforce Ventures, Rembrandt Venture Partners and Blackbird Ventures. Neither Canva nor Ortto disclosed Ortto's headcount or revenue.
Why Canva is buying
Canva introduced Canva Grow in October 2025 as a product for planning, creating, publishing and measuring marketing campaigns. Capital Brief reported that Canva had been watching Ortto for some time as it built out Grow.
Cliff Obrecht, Canva's co-founder and chief operating officer, said Ortto strengthened Canva's ability to run the whole marketing and content lifecycle through Grow, from planning and creating to publishing and optimising across every channel. He described the two acquisitions together as a step toward making Canva the system where work happens end to end, whether a quick idea or a full campaign.
Mike Sharkey said the founders had worked from the start to make complex things simple with both Simtheory and Ortto, and wanted to keep doing that at a larger scale inside Canva.
A string of Canva acquisitions
Canva says it serves more than 265 million monthly users in more than 190 countries. Mediaweek reported that it ended 2025 with $3.5 billion in revenue and was valued at $42 billion in an employee share sale in August 2025.
The Ortto and Simtheory deals followed Canva's earlier purchases of MagicBrief, MangoAI and Doohly, as the company added AI, advertising and marketing tools. The announcements came a week before Canva Create, the company's annual product event, held on April 16 in Los Angeles.
Canva has still not set a date for a stock market listing. Mediaweek noted that chief executive Melanie Perkins said in April 2025 that an IPO was on the horizon.
