Klaviyo Acquires AI Startup Agency Founded by Elias Torres

Klaviyo has agreed to acquire AI-powered customer success startup Agency, bringing serial entrepreneur Elias Torres back together with one of his earliest employees in a deal that marks a full-circle moment for both founders. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Founded in 2023, Agency raised $32 million from investors including Sequoia, Menlo Ventures and Felicis before agreeing to join the publicly traded marketing automation company.

As part of the acquisition, Agency founder Elias Torres will become Klaviyo’s chief product officer. He and Agency’s 25-person team will help accelerate the development of Klaviyo’s AI products, including Composer, which creates marketing campaigns, and Customer Agent. This AI assistant handles post-purchase tasks such as returns and order tracking.

A partnership years in the making

For Torres, the deal represents another milestone in a career that has included multiple successful startup exits. He previously co-founded Performable, which HubSpot acquired in 2011. He later co-founded Drift, serving as chief technology officer until Vista Equity Partners acquired the company in a deal valued at $1.2 billion in 2021.

The acquisition also reunites Torres with Klaviyo co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Andrew Bialecki. While leading Performable in 2010, Torres hired Bialecki, then a recent Harvard graduate, as one of the startup’s first engineers and mentored him during the early stages of his career.

After leaving Performable, Bialecki went on to establish Klaviyo, initially bootstrapping the company before raising outside funding. When Klaviyo completed its first funding round in 2015, Torres participated as an angel investor, further strengthening the relationship that has now evolved into a business partnership.

Expanding Klaviyo’s AI strategy

Klaviyo completed its initial public offering in September 2023 at a valuation of approximately $9.2 billion. Although software company valuations have faced pressure in recent years, Klaviyo believes its extensive customer data provides an important advantage in developing AI-powered business tools.

Bialecki said combining Agency’s technology with Klaviyo’s existing AI offerings will allow the company to deliver intelligent customer engagement tools to more than 200,000 businesses today, with plans to reach millions more merchants over the coming years.

Both Torres and Bialecki said they see AI agents as the next major shift in enterprise software, arguing that businesses with deep customer data will be well positioned to compete against newer AI-focused companies while helping brands automate marketing and customer support more effectively.