Klaviyo Acquires Agency Founded by Elias Torres: A Full-Circle Reunion for Tech Innovators

Klaviyo, a publicly traded marketing automation platform tailored for e-commerce, has reached an agreement to acquire Agency, an AI-driven customer success startup established three years ago by serial entrepreneur Elias Torres. The financial specifics of the deal remain undisclosed.

Founded in 2023, Agency successfully secured $32 million from notable investors such as Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, and Felicis prior to the acquisition.

As part of this agreement, Torres (shown left) will assume the role of chief product officer (CPO) at Klaviyo, overseeing Agency’s team of 25 to propel the development and growth of Klaviyo’s AI agents: Composer, which crafts marketing campaigns, and Customer Agent, which assists with post-sale tasks like returns and order tracking.

“Elias and his team have developed an exceptional product at Agency,” stated Klaviyo co-founder and CEO Andrew Bialecki (shown right) in an interview with TechCrunch. “We aim to integrate that with our existing agent offerings to enhance the experience for 200,000 businesses—and eventually millions more in the future.”

For Torres, this move to Klaviyo marks a crucial advancement in his career. He previously co-founded Performable (acquired by HubSpot in 2011) and spent eight years as CTO at Drift until its $1.2 billion acquisition by Vista Equity in 2021, giving him extensive knowledge of M&A transactions.

Back in 2010 at Performable, Torres enlisted Bialecki, one of the startup’s first engineers, right after he graduated from Harvard. Torres provided mentorship as Bialecki learned to navigate the startup landscape. “He picked things up incredibly quickly,” Torres reminisced about their collaborative experiences.

Following his time at Performable, Bialecki co-founded Klaviyo, initially bootstrapping the organization. When Klaviyo landed its first external funding round in 2015, Bialecki invited Torres to participate as an angel investor.
The company later garnered attention with a notable IPO in September 2023, achieving a valuation of $9.2 billion.

Despite experiencing a decline in stock prices like many SaaS companies, both Torres and Bialecki are confident that the platform’s extensive customer data provides its AI agents with a significant edge over competitors such as Decagon and Sierra.

“Elias and I are united in our mission to equip agents for businesses to enhance customer service,” Bialecki expressed, sharing his enthusiasm about partnering with Torres once again, reminiscent of their early experiences at the start of the cloud era. “This is the next major technological revolution: agents. Let’s collaborate and create something extraordinary.”