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

Klaviyo 收购 Elias Torres 创办的 Agency，科技创业者迎来“圆满重逢”

Publicly traded e-commerce marketing automation platform Klaviyo has agreed to acquire Agency, a three-year-old AI-powered customer success startup founded by serial entrepreneur Elias Torres. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. 上市电子商务营销自动化平台 Klaviyo 已同意收购 Agency。Agency 是一家成立三年的 AI 驱动型客户成功初创公司，由连续创业者 Elias Torres 创立。交易条款未予披露。

Founded in 2023, Agency had raised $32 million from investors, including Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, and Felicis prior to the acquisition. As part of the deal, Torres (pictured left) will join Klaviyo as chief product officer, leading Agency’s 25-person team to accelerate the development and expansion of Klaviyo’s AI agents: Composer, which builds marketing campaigns, and Customer Agent, which handles post-sale support like returns and order tracking. Agency 成立于 2023 年，在被收购前已从红杉资本（Sequoia）、Menlo Ventures 和 Felicis 等投资者处筹集了 3200 万美元。作为交易的一部分，Torres（左图）将加入 Klaviyo 担任首席产品官，带领 Agency 的 25 人团队，加速 Klaviyo AI 智能体的开发与扩展。这些智能体包括用于构建营销活动的 Composer，以及处理退货和订单追踪等售后支持的 Customer Agent。

“Elias and the team built a great product with Agency,” Klaviyo co-founder and CEO Andrew Bialecki (pictured right) told TechCrunch. “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.” “Elias 和他的团队通过 Agency 打造了一款出色的产品，”Klaviyo 联合创始人兼首席执行官 Andrew Bialecki（右图）告诉 TechCrunch。“我们将把这款产品与我们现有的智能体产品相结合，并努力将其推广给 20 万家企业，希望在未来几年内覆盖更多企业。”

For Torres, joining Klaviyo brings his career full circle. He is no stranger to M&A exits, having co-founded Performable (acquired by HubSpot in 2011) and later Drift, where he served as CTO for eight years until its $1.2 billion sale to Vista Equity in 2021. 对于 Torres 而言，加入 Klaviyo 让他的职业生涯画上了一个圆满的句号。他对于并购退出并不陌生，曾联合创办了 Performable（2011 年被 HubSpot 收购），随后又创办了 Drift，并担任首席技术官长达八年，直到 2021 年 Drift 以 12 亿美元的价格出售给 Vista Equity。

Back in 2010 at Performable, Torres hired Bialecki, who had graduated from Harvard two years earlier, as one of that startup’s first engineers. Torres mentored Bialecki on early-stage startup dynamics. “He soaked it up in a short amount of time,” Torres recalled of their time working together. 早在 2010 年的 Performable，Torres 就聘请了刚从哈佛毕业两年的 Bialecki，使其成为该初创公司的首批工程师之一。Torres 指导了 Bialecki 关于早期初创公司运作的知识。回忆起共事的时光，Torres 说：“他在很短的时间内就吸收了所有知识。”

Bialecki co-founded Klaviyo, which he initially bootstrapped, shortly after leaving Performable. When Klaviyo raised its first outside capital in 2015, Bialecki invited Torres to back the seed round as an angel investor. Klaviyo went on to complete a high-profile IPO in September 2023 at a $9.2 billion valuation. 离开 Performable 后不久，Bialecki 联合创办了 Klaviyo，并最初以自筹资金方式运营。2015 年 Klaviyo 进行首轮外部融资时，Bialecki 邀请 Torres 作为天使投资人参与了种子轮投资。随后，Klaviyo 于 2023 年 9 月完成了备受瞩目的 IPO，估值达到 92 亿美元。

While Klaviyo’s stock has taken a hit alongside other SaaS companies, Torres and Bialecki believe the platform’s years of customer data give its AI agents an advantage over competitors like Decagon and Sierra. 尽管 Klaviyo 的股价与其他 SaaS 公司一样受到冲击，但 Torres 和 Bialecki 坚信，该平台多年积累的客户数据使其 AI 智能体在面对 Decagon 和 Sierra 等竞争对手时具备显著优势。

“Elias and I coalesced on the mission of how we provide agents for businesses that they can give to their customers,” Bialecki said, adding that he is excited to work with Torres again, as he did at the beginning of the cloud era. “It’s the next Big Tech revolution: agents. Let’s get the band back together, and let’s go build.” “Elias 和我在如何为企业提供可供其客户使用的智能体这一使命上达成了共识，”Bialecki 说道。他补充说，他很高兴能像云时代初期那样再次与 Torres 共事。“这是下一个大型科技革命：智能体。让我们重聚在一起，共同去创造。”