Canva shopper-in-chief Cliff Obrecht’s perception that it’s higher to purchase than construct has continued with two extra acquisitions, each from the sibling founders of Stayz.
The design platform has now snapped up eight startups and scaleups in two years. That is the 4th and fifth in 2026 – the most recent two coming only a fortnight after spending a rumoured $30 million on digital outdoor advertising startup Doohly.
The 2 Australian tech platforms being bolted on to Starship Canva are Simtheory, an AI collaboration and agent administration platform, and Ortto, a buyer information and advertising automation firm.
As standard, Canva didn’t disclose the acquisition value.
However as soon as once more VC agency Blackbird, which has Canva as its golden goose, finds itself on either side of the deal, having backed Sydney-founded Ortto, together with a US$12 million (then A$16m) raise in 2017.
Ortto launched 2012 as Autopilot, earlier than rebranding in 2022, and all up raised $46 million from the likes of Rembrandt Enterprise Companions, Salesforce Ventures, and Southern Cross Enterprise Companions. The scale of the funding suggests Orbrecht put a minimum of eight zeros following the primary quantity after the $ signal to seal the deal. Learn extra of Startup Daily’s coverage of Ortto, nee Autopilot here.
Simtheory is a more moderen beast, kicking off as a podcast 3 years in the past earlier than evolving right into a safe workspace for groups to make use of AI, elevating a $5 million Seed spherical 12 months in the past.
Each firms had been constructed by Stayz founders Chris and Mike Sharkey who exited that vacation leases platform to the previous Fairfax Media (now a part of 9). The duo keep on at Canva, taking management roles in AI and advertising expertise groups.
Complementary AI
Obrecht says that collectively, they create complementary strengths throughout agentic AI, information infrastructure, advertising automation, and buyer engagement. Simtheory can have a starring function in subsequent week’s Canva Create on April 16, which the cofounder and chief operations officer as “the most important transformation” within the privately-owned firm’s historical past.
“This acquisition marks an vital step towards evolving Canva from a design device into the system the place work occurs end-to-end, whether or not it’s a fast thought or a full marketing campaign,” Obrecht stated.
“Simtheory accelerates our evolution from a design platform with AI instruments to an AI platform with design and productiveness instruments at its core. On the identical time, Ortto strengthens our skill to energy the whole advertising and content material lifecycle by means of Canva Develop.”
Obrecht’s itchy acquisitive finger kicked off 2026 by snapping up US startup Mango.AI while it was still in stealth mode, as well as the UK’s Cavalry.
Since 2024, Canva’s additionally gobbled up UK rival Affinity and native generative AI platform Leonardo in addition to MagicBrief last year.
Mike Sharkey stated: “From day one, we’ve been working to make advanced issues easy with each Simtheory and Ortto, and we are able to’t wait to proceed doing that on an excellent bigger scale as a part of Canva.”
Canva topped $4 billion in annualised income final 12 months, and is contemplating going public with an inventory within the US later this 12 months.
The enterprise was valued at $65 billion following a secondaries share sale in mid-2025.
