Klaviyo has agreed to acquire Agency, an AI customer success startup founded by serial entrepreneur Elias Torres. Financial terms were not disclosed, and Torres will join Klaviyo as chief product officer once the deal closes.
Agency’s 25-person team will also join Klaviyo, where it will work on the company’s growing range of AI agents. Klaviyo said the acquisition is intended to speed up development of tools that help businesses automate marketing and post-purchase customer interactions.
Agency Team Will Work on Klaviyo’s AI Agents
Klaviyo currently offers Composer, which helps businesses create marketing campaigns, and Customer Agent, which handles tasks such as order tracking and returns. Chief executive Andrew Bialecki said Agency’s technology and team would be combined with those products and eventually made available across Klaviyo’s customer base.
Klaviyo says it serves more than 200,000 businesses. Bialecki told TechCrunch that the company hopes its AI agents can eventually reach millions more businesses.
Agency built AI tools specifically for customer success teams. Its flagship product, Kai, was designed to monitor customer accounts, identify risks and opportunities, and carry out workflows related to onboarding, adoption, retention and expansion.
The startup announced a $20 million Series A in November 2025 led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Felicis Ventures, Snowflake Ventures and Databricks Ventures. Combined with an earlier $12 million round, Agency had raised about $32 million before the acquisition.
Torres and Bialecki Reunite After Performable
The deal also reunites Torres and Bialecki more than 15 years after they worked together at Performable. Torres hired Bialecki as one of the startup’s early engineers in 2010 before HubSpot acquired Performable the following year.
Bialecki later left and co-founded Klaviyo, initially building the company without outside funding. When Klaviyo raised its first external capital in 2015, Torres participated as an angel investor.
Torres also went on to co-found Drift, where he served as chief technology officer. Vista Equity Partners acquired a majority stake in Drift in 2021 in a transaction that valued the company at more than $1 billion.
Klaviyo completed its initial public offering in September 2023 at a valuation of about $9.2 billion.
Klaviyo Sees Customer Data as an AI Advantage
Klaviyo believes its years of customer, marketing and transaction data can give its AI agents more context when interacting with shoppers. The company is competing with other AI customer-service platforms, including Sierra and Decagon.
Bialecki said the goal is to provide businesses with AI agents they can deploy directly to their own customers. Klaviyo described the acquisition in its official announcement as part of its effort to expand AI-powered customer relationships across marketing, service and commerce.
For Torres, the deal marks another acquisition after Performable and Drift while returning him to work with one of his former employees. He will now oversee Klaviyo’s product organisation as the company places greater emphasis on AI agents.
Featured image credits: Magnific.com
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