Klaviyo, the publicly traded e-commerce marketing automation platform, has agreed to acquire Agency, a three-year-old AI-powered customer success startup founded by Elias Torres, in a deal with undisclosed financial terms. Agency had previously raised $32 million from investors including Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, and Felicis.
As part of the acquisition, Torres will join Klaviyo as chief product officer, leading Agency’s 25-person team to help expand Klaviyo’s AI agent offerings, including Composer, which builds marketing campaigns, and Customer Agent, which manages post-sale support tasks like returns and order tracking. Klaviyo co-founder and CEO Andrew Bialeckisaid the goal is to bring the combined AI capabilities to Klaviyo’s roughly 200,000 business customers and expand further in coming years.
The deal marks a reunion between Torres and Bialecki, who first worked together in 2010 when Torres hired Bialecki as an early engineer at his startup Performable, later acquired by HubSpot. Torres went on to co-found Drift, which sold to Vista Equity for $1.2 billion in 2021, while Bialecki founded Klaviyo shortly after leaving Performable, with Torres later investing as an early backer. Klaviyo went public in 2023 at a $9.2 billion valuation. Bialecki said the partnership positions Klaviyo to compete with AI agent rivals like Decagon and Sierra by leveraging its extensive customer data.
Featured image: Credit: Klaviyo
