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Klaviyo acquires Agency, names Elias Torres chief product officer

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Klaviyo acquires Agency, names Elias Torres chief product officer

Klaviyo, a publicly traded e-commerce marketing automation platform, has agreed to acquire Agency, a three-year-old AI-powered customer success startup founded by serial entrepreneur Elias Torres. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2023, Agency had raised $32 million from investors including Sequoia, Menlo Ventures and Felicis before the acquisition.

As part of the deal, Torres will join Klaviyo as chief product officer, leading Agency's 25-person team to speed up development of Klaviyo's AI agents: Composer, which builds marketing campaigns, and Customer Agent, which handles post-sale support such as returns and order tracking. Klaviyo co-founder and CEO Andrew Bialecki told TechCrunch that the company plans to combine Agency's product with its own agent lineup and try to bring it to 200,000 businesses, with hopes of reaching millions more over the next few years, adding, "Elias and the team built a great product with Agency."

For Torres, the move is as much a reunion as a new job. He previously co-founded Performable, which HubSpot acquired in 2011, then spent eight years as Drift's chief technology officer until its $1.2 billion sale to Vista Equity in 2021. Back in 2010, while running Performable, Torres hired Bialecki, then two years out of Harvard, as one of the startup's first engineers, and mentored him on early-stage startup dynamics; Torres said Bialecki "soaked it up in a short amount of time." Bialecki went on to co-found Klaviyo, which he initially bootstrapped, after leaving Performable, and when Klaviyo raised its first outside capital in 2015, he invited Torres to back the seed round as an angel investor.

Klaviyo completed a high-profile IPO in September 2023 at a $9.2 billion valuation. Its stock has since taken a hit alongside other SaaS companies, but Torres and Bialecki believe the platform's years of accumulated customer data give its AI agents an edge over rivals such as Decagon and Sierra. Bialecki said the two "coalesced on the mission of how we provide agents for businesses that they can give to their customers," adding that he was excited to work with Torres again just as he had been at the start of the cloud era. "It's the next Big Tech revolution: agents," he said. "Let's get the band back together, and let's go build."

Key facts

  • Klaviyo has agreed to acquire Agency, a three-year-old AI customer success startup that had raised $32 million from Sequoia, Menlo Ventures and Felicis; the deal's terms were not disclosed.
  • Agency founder Elias Torres joins Klaviyo as chief product officer, leading Agency's 25-person team on Klaviyo's AI agents Composer, which builds marketing campaigns, and Customer Agent, which handles post-sale support.
  • Torres previously co-founded Performable, sold to HubSpot in 2011, and spent eight years as Drift's chief technology officer until its $1.2 billion sale to Vista Equity in 2021.
  • Torres hired Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki at Performable in 2010 and later backed Klaviyo's 2015 seed round as an angel investor.
  • Klaviyo, which went public in September 2023 at a $9.2 billion valuation, says it wants to bring its combined agent products to 200,000 businesses.

Why it matters

The deal moves a well-funded AI startup and its founder directly into Klaviyo's leadership rather than treating the acquisition as a routine tuck-in: Torres becomes chief product officer rather than an adviser or a line engineer. Klaviyo frames the purchase as fuel for its two customer-facing AI agents, Composer for building marketing campaigns and Customer Agent for post-sale support such as returns and order tracking, at a time when it is trying to compete on agents against rivals such as Decagon and Sierra.

Who it affects

Agency's 25-person team moves into Klaviyo under Torres' leadership. Agency's investors, including Sequoia, Menlo Ventures and Felicis, who had put $32 million into the three-year-old startup, get an exit, though the price was not disclosed. Klaviyo's customers are the intended beneficiaries: Bialecki said the company wants to bring the combined agent products to 200,000 businesses, with hopes of reaching millions more.

How to use it

There is no new product to sign up for yet. The acquisition is framed as accelerating development of Composer and Customer Agent rather than launching something new today, and the source does not say whether either tool is already generally available or still being built, nor does it give pricing for Klaviyo's agent products.

How solid is it

The account rests on on-the-record quotes from Bialecki and Torres to TechCrunch, and it gives specific, checkable figures: Agency's funding of $32 million from Sequoia, Menlo Ventures and Felicis, its team size of 25, and Klaviyo's $9.2 billion IPO valuation are all stated plainly. What is missing is the deal itself: no purchase price, no Agency valuation at sale, and no closing timeline are given, and the 200,000-business figure comes from Bialecki's own quote about where he wants to take the combined products rather than a stated current customer count.

Risks and caveats

The piece does not say whether Composer and Customer Agent are already live or still in development, so how much changes for existing Klaviyo customers, and when, is unclear. It also notes that Klaviyo's stock "has taken a hit alongside other SaaS companies" without giving a figure, and it names no Agency executives or co-founders besides Torres, nor does it state what equity or board role, if any, he receives at Klaviyo beyond the chief product officer title.

“It's the next Big Tech revolution: agents. Let's get the band back together, and let's go build.”

— Andrew Bialecki, Klaviyo co-founder and CEO