Klaviyo acquires Elias Torres' Agency in full-circle reunion for tech founders

Klaviyo has agreed to acquire Agency, an AI-powered customer success startup founded by Elias Torres, the companies announced Tuesday. Klaviyo co-founder and CEO Andrew Bialecki said the deal will combine Agency's technology with Klaviyo's agent products to bring them to 200,000 businesses. Founded in 2023, Agency had raised $32 million from investors including Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, and Felicis prior to the acquisition. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. As part of the agreement, Torres will join Klaviyo as chief product officer and lead Agency's 25-person team to accelerate development of Klaviyo's AI agents Composer and Customer Agent. Torres previously co-founded Performable, which was acquired by HubSpot in 2011, and served as CTO of Drift until its $1.2 billion sale to Vista Equity in 2021. He hired Bialecki as one of Performable's first engineers in 2010 and later backed Klaviyo's seed round as an angel investor in 2015. Klaviyo completed an IPO in September 2023 at a $9.2 billion valuation.