Klaviyo acquires Agency, appoints Elias Torres as chief product officer in full-circle reunion

Klaviyo acquires Elias Torres' Agency in full-circle reunion for tech founders

Publicly traded e-commerce marketing automation platform Klaviyo 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 prior to the acquisition. As part of the deal, Torres (pictured left) will join Klaviyo as chief product officer (CPO), leading Agency's 25-person team to accelerate the development and expansion of Klaviyo's AI agents: Composer, which builds marketing campaigns, and Customer Agent, which handles post-sale support like returns and order tracking "Elias and the team built a great product with Agency," Klaviyo co-founder and CEO Andrew Bialecki (pictured right) told TechCrunch. "We're going to take that and combine it with our agent products and try to bring that to 200,000 businesses -- and hopefully to millions more over the next couple of years." For Torres, joining Klaviyo brings his career full circle. He is no stranger to M&A exits, having co-founded Performable (acquired by HubSpot in 2011) and later Drift, where he served as CTO for eight years until its $1.2 billion sale to Vista Equity in 2021. Back in 2010 at Performable, Torres hired Bialecki, who had graduated from Harvard two years earlier, as one of that startup's first engineers. Torres mentored Bialecki on early-stage startup dynamics. "He soaked it up in a short amount of time," Torres recalled of their time working together. Bialecki co-founded Klaviyo, which he initially bootstrapped, shortly after leaving Performable. When Klaviyo raised its first outside capital in 2015, Bialecki invited Torres to back the seed round as an angel investor. Klaviyo went on to complete a high-profile IPO in September 2023 at a $9.2 billion valuation. While Klaviyo's stock has taken a hit alongside other SaaS companies, Torres and Bialecki believe the platform's years of customer data give its AI agents an advantage over competitors like Decagon and Sierra. "Elias and I coalesced on the mission of how we provide agents for businesses that they can give to their customers," Bialecki said, adding that he is excited to work with Torres again as he did at the beginning of the cloud era. "It's the next big tech revolution: agents. Let's get the band back together, and let's go build."

Klaviyo to acquire Agency team, names Elias Torres as CPO By Investing.com

BOSTON - Klaviyo (NYSE:KVYO) announced an agreement to acquire the team and technology of Agency, an AI customer success company, according to a press release statement. Elias Torres, co-founder and CEO of Agency, will join Klaviyo as Chief Product Officer following the deal's close, expected in Q3 2026. Torres will lead the company's agent product line, including Composer and Customer Agent, reporting to co-CEO Andrew Bialecki. Torres and Bialecki have a professional history spanning more than two decades. Torres hired Bialecki as an engineer at Performable before HubSpot acquired the company in 2011. Torres later co-founded Drift and then Agency, while Bialecki went on to co-found Klaviyo. Under the transaction terms, Klaviyo will acquire Agency's proprietary software and related intellectual property. Other members of the Agency team are expected to join Klaviyo after closing. Klaviyo's Composer functions as a marketing agent that analyzes performance and builds campaigns, while Customer Agent provides businesses with an automated customer service tool. The company's data infrastructure stores more than nine billion consumer profiles and processes over 250 billion data points quarterly. "Elias has been at the forefront of AI agents for support and sales for years," said Bialecki. "Together we're going to build on that momentum and enhance the experience our agents can provide for the businesses Klaviyo serves." Torres stated, "By joining Klaviyo, I get the other half, an understanding of consumer behavior that nobody else has, and the ability to scale faster." Klaviyo serves more than 205,000 paying customers and offers over 350 integrations. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.