Klaviyo Buys Agency To Expand AI Agents Under New Product Chief
Klaviyo agreed to acquire the AI-powered customer success startup Agency, bringing founder Elias Torres and a 25-person team into its product organization to expand AI agents for marketing campaigns and post-sale support.
Klaviyo is folding a small AI customer-success startup into its core product organization, giving the e-commerce marketing company a new chief product officer and a dedicated team for agent software.
TechCrunch reported that the company agreed to acquire Agency, a three-year-old startup founded by Elias Torres, and that before the sale Agency had collected $32 million from backers including Sequoia, Menlo Ventures and Felicis.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The deal moves Torres into Klaviyo as chief product officer and brings Agency's 25-person team into work on Klaviyo's AI agents.
Composer creates campaign drafts, while Customer Agent supports after-purchase service workflows that include return handling and order-status checks.
That structure makes the acquisition more than a founder reunion.
Klaviyo is using the purchase to place startup staff directly against merchant-facing workflows where the company already sells marketing automation and support tools.
Torres also brings a history of software exits that connects the transaction to Klaviyo's earlier network.
He co-founded Performable, which HubSpot acquired in 2011, and later served for eight years as Drift's chief technology officer before Drift's $1.2 billion sale to Vista Equity in 2021.
TechCrunch also reported that Torres hired Andrew Bialecki in 2010 as one of Performable's first engineers, and that Bialecki invited Torres to join Klaviyo's first outside capital round as an angel investor in 2015.
The relationship gives the acquisition a product-leadership handoff as well as a team acquisition.
Klaviyo completed its initial public offering in September 2023 at a $9.2 billion valuation.
Torres and Bialecki said Klaviyo's years of customer data could help its AI agents compete with rivals including Decagon and Sierra, while Bialecki described agents as the next major technology shift for the business.
Customer adoption and the purchase price were not provided.
The near-term proof will be whether the acquired team ships agent features that merchants use inside campaigns and support operations.
