Klaviyo buys AI startup Agency, appointing founder Elias Torres as chief product officer

Klaviyo, the publicly traded e-commerce marketing automation firm, has agreed to purchase Agency, an AI-powered customer-success startup founded in 2023 by serial entrepreneur Elias Torres. The deal’s financial details were not disclosed, and Agency had previously secured $32 million from investors including Sequoia, Menlo Ventures and Felicis. Under the agreement, Torres will assume the role of chief product officer at Klaviyo and will oversee Agency’s 25-member team to accelerate the development of Klaviyo’s AI agents, Composer for campaign creation and Customer Agent for post-sale support.

Klaviyo co-founder and CEO Andrew Bialecki said the integration will help scale these agents to the platform’s 200,000 business users and beyond. Torres’s career comes full circle: he co-founded Performable, which HubSpot acquired, and spent eight years as CTO of Drift before its $1.2 billion sale to Vista Equity. He also mentored Bialecki early on, and Bialecki later invited him to back Klaviyo’s seed round before its 2023 IPO at a $9.2 billion valuation.