Klaviyo was founded in 2012 by Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen in Boston. They’d worked together at Applied Predictive Technologies and saw that e-commerce companies were sitting on rich customer data but had no good way to use it for marketing. Email tools at the time treated every subscriber the same — Klaviyo was built to change that.
The platform collects data from e-commerce platforms, websites, and other sources to build detailed customer profiles. Merchants create automated email and SMS flows triggered by specific behaviors — browsing a product, abandoning a cart, making a purchase, or hitting a loyalty milestone. Every message can be personalized based on purchase history, browsing data, and predicted behavior.
Klaviyo went public on the NYSE in September 2023, raising $576 million at a valuation of approximately $9.2 billion. Shopify invested $100 million in Klaviyo ahead of the IPO and made it the recommended email platform for Shopify merchants.
The platform’s CDP (Customer Data Platform) capabilities let merchants segment their audience with extreme precision — down to customers who bought a specific product, opened a certain email, and live in a particular zip code. Predictive analytics estimate future purchase dates, lifetime value, and churn risk.
Klaviyo serves over 143,000 customers, generating more than $700 million in annual revenue as of 2023. Major users include Custom Ink, Living Proof, and Chubbies. The company employs over 2,000 people across Boston, London, Sydney, and other offices.
