Klaviyo, an e-commerce marketing automation firm listed on the stock exchange, has announced its acquisition of Agency, a startup specializing in AI-driven customer success. The financial details of the agreement have not been disclosed.
Established in 2023, Agency successfully garnered $32 million in funding from notable investors such as Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, and Felicis before the takeover.
Under the terms of the acquisition, Elias Torres will step into the role of chief product officer at Klaviyo and will lead Agency’s 25-member team. Their focus will be on enhancing Klaviyo’s AI tools, including Composer for creating marketing campaigns and Customer Agent for managing post-purchase customer service functions like returns and order tracking.
“Elias and his team created an impressive product at Agency,” remarked Andrew Bialecki, Klaviyo’s co-founder and CEO. “We plan to integrate their innovations with our existing agent solutions and aim to serve not just 200,000 businesses, but many millions in the upcoming years.”
For Torres, this new chapter at Klaviyo represents a full-circle moment in his professional journey. He is well-acquainted with mergers and acquisitions, having co-founded Performable, which was acquired by HubSpot in 2011, and later serving as CTO at Drift until its $1.2 billion sale to Vista Equity in 2021.
In 2010, while at Performable, Torres hired Bialecki, who had graduated from Harvard just two years prior, as one of the company’s first engineers. Torres played a vital role in mentoring Bialecki on various aspects of startup operations. “He was quick to learn and absorb everything,” Torres reflected on their collaboration.
Bialecki would eventually co-found Klaviyo, which he initially built without outside funding after leaving Performable. When Klaviyo embarked on its first fundraising round in 2015, Bialecki invited Torres to invest as an angel backer. The company culminated its growth with a notable IPO in September 2023, achieving a valuation of $9.2 billion.
Although Klaviyo’s stock has faced challenges similar to other SaaS companies, both Torres and Bialecki are confident that the extensive customer data Klaviyo has accumulated provides its AI agents with a competitive edge against rivals like Decagon and Sierra.
“Elias and I share a vision for creating agents that empower businesses to serve their customers effectively,” Bialecki expressed, expressing enthusiasm about collaborating with Torres again as they had in the early days of cloud technology. “This is the next wave of technological innovation: agents. Let’s reunite and start building.”
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