Klaviyo acquires Agency, reuniting tech founders Elias Torres and Andrew Bialecki

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. Agency raised $32 million from investors including Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, and Felicis before the acquisition. Torres will join Klaviyo as chief product officer, 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. Klaviyo's CEO Andrew Bialecki said they will combine Agency's product with Klaviyo's agent products to bring to 200,000 businesses and potentially millions more. Torres' career comes full circle: he co-founded Performable (acquired by HubSpot in 2011) and Drift (sold to Vista Equity for $1.2 billion in 2021). In 2010, Torres hired Bialecki as one of Performable's first engineers, mentoring him. Bialecki later co-founded Klaviyo, which went public in September 2023. Despite Klaviyo's stock decline, Torres and Bialecki believe Klaviyo's years of customer data give its AI agents an edge over competitors like Decagon and Sierra.