Klaviyo acquires Agency, appoints Elias Torres as CPO
Original: Klaviyo acquires Elias Torres’ Agency in full-circle reunion for tech founders
Why This Matters
The deal signals Klaviyo's strategic push into AI agents for e-commerce, competing with Decagon and Sierra.
Klaviyo has agreed to acquire Agency, a three-year-old AI customer success startup founded by Elias Torres, who will join Klaviyo as Chief Product Officer. Financial terms were not disclosed. Agency had raised $32M from Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, and Felicis since its 2023 founding.
Publicly traded e-commerce marketing automation platform Klaviyo has agreed to acquire Agency, an AI-powered customer success startup founded in 2023 by serial entrepreneur Elias Torres. Terms were not disclosed. Agency had raised $32 million from Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, and Felicis prior to the deal. Torres will join Klaviyo as Chief Product Officer, leading Agency's 25-person team to expand Klaviyo's AI agents: Composer, which builds marketing campaigns, and Customer Agent, which handles post-sale support such as returns and order tracking. CEO Andrew Bialecki said the goal is to bring the combined product to Klaviyo's 200,000 existing businesses and potentially millions more. The acquisition has a personal dimension: Torres hired Bialecki at Performable in 2010, mentoring him on startup dynamics. Bialecki later co-founded Klaviyo, and when it raised its first outside capital in 2015, he invited Torres to participate as an angel investor. Klaviyo went public in September 2023 at a $9.2 billion valuation. Torres previously co-founded Performable (acquired by HubSpot in 2011) and Drift (sold to Vista Equity in 2021 for $1.2 billion).