Klaviyo acquires Elias Torres' Agency; co-founder returns as CPO

Klaviyo, a publicly traded e-commerce marketing automation platform, has agreed to acquire Agency, a three-year-old startup founded by serial entrepreneur Elias Torres. Founded in 2023, Agency had raised $32 million from investors including Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, and Felicis. Under the acquisition, Torres will become Klaviyo's chief product officer, overseeing Agency's 25-person team as they accelerate work on two of Klaviyo's AI agents: Composer, which builds marketing campaigns, and Customer Agent, which automates post-sale support tasks such as processing returns and tracking orders.

Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki told TechCrunch that the combined teams will work to bring these AI agents to Klaviyo's 200,000 businesses and "hopefully to millions more over the next couple of years." The acquisition deal terms were not disclosed. For Torres, the move completes a remarkable arc in his entrepreneurial career. He previously co-founded Performable, which HubSpot acquired in 2011, and later served as CTO at Drift for eight years before its $1.2 billion sale to Vista Equity in 2021.

The connection between Torres and Bialecki dates back to 2010 at Performable, where Torres hired Bialecki as one of that startup's first engineers shortly after Bialecki's graduation from Harvard. Torres mentored Bialecki on early-stage startup dynamics, with Torres recalling that Bialecki "soaked it up in a short amount of time." Bialecki went on to co-found Klaviyo shortly after leaving Performable, initially bootstrapping the company. When Klaviyo raised its first outside capital in 2015, Bialecki invited Torres to back the seed round as an angel investor. Klaviyo subsequently completed a high-profile IPO in September 2023 at a $9.2 billion valuation, though its stock has faced pressure alongside other SaaS companies.

Bialecki and Torres believe Klaviyo's deep repository of customer data gives its AI agents a competitive edge over rivals like Decagon and Sierra. Bialecki framed the reunion as part of a broader wave: "It's the next big tech revolution: agents. Let's get the band back together, and let's go build." The acquisition underscores how established platforms are incorporating AI-powered agents to deepen customer relationships and automate complex business workflows.