Klaviyo Taps Agency Co-Founder Torres as Chief Product Officer in AI-Focused Acquisition

Klaviyo, a publicly traded marketing automation platform for e-commerce, has acquired Agency, an AI-powered customer success startup founded by entrepreneur Elias Torres. The company announced the deal without disclosing financial terms, though Agency had previously raised $32 million from backers including Sequoia Capital, Menlo Ventures, and Felicis.

Torres Joins as Chief Product Officer#

Under the agreement, Torres will take on the role of chief product officer at Klaviyo and lead Agency's 25-person team. His mandate includes accelerating development of Klaviyo's two AI agent products—Composer, which designs and builds marketing campaigns, and Customer Agent, which manages post-purchase interactions such as returns and order inquiries.

Klaviyo co-founder and CEO Andrew Bialecki emphasized the opportunity to scale these capabilities: "We're going to take that and combine it with our agent products and try to bring that to 200,000 businesses—and hopefully to millions more over the next couple of years."

The Story Behind the Partnership#

The acquisition completes a professional arc for Torres, who has built a track record of founding and exiting tech ventures. He co-founded Performable, which HubSpot acquired in 2011, and later launched Drift, where he spent eight years as chief technology officer before its $1.2 billion sale to Vista Equity Partners in 2021.

The connection to Bialecki runs deeper: in 2010, Torres hired Bialecki at Performable shortly after Bialecki graduated from Harvard, giving him his first startup experience. Years later, when Bialecki bootstrapped Klaviyo and subsequently raised its first outside funding round in 2015, he invited Torres to invest at the seed stage. Klaviyo went public in September 2023 at a $9.2 billion valuation.

Positioning Against Competitors#

Both executives believe Klaviyo's accumulated customer data gives its agents a competitive edge over rivals like Decagon and Sierra. Bialecki framed the partnership as a return to entrepreneurial roots: "It's the next big tech revolution: agents. Let's get the band back together, and let's go build."