Alvas.ai
Alvas.ai sells online shops an AI layer for their marketing email. A shop connects it to its email service provider, the platform that stores the subscriber list and sends the mail, such as Klaviyo. In the shop's flows, the emails that the platform sends automatically after an event such as an abandoned cart or a viewed product, Alvas writes the subject line, the headline and the text for each recipient from the products and the customer data, in the shop's tone of voice and in more than 40 languages. The model behind it is rented: the terms of service say the AI runs on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service, which is OpenAI's models hosted and sold by Microsoft.
Villads Leth appears in the sources as founder, co-founder and CEO. The company behind the site is 404 Technologies Inc., and its case studies come from the Danish market: the email agency Ackermann and its clients, and the retailer Coolshop. In November 2024 he reported US$102,300 in annual recurring revenue (ARR), the subscription revenue of one year at the current monthly rate, with a team of two, after a raise of US$61,500 in May 2024. In early 2025 he reported that monthly recurring revenue (MRR) had grown 91% to US$16,350, with US$39,147 in the bank.
Both figures are the founder's own statements as relayed by one site, gaps.com, so they are grade C. They agree with each other: US$102,300 a year is about US$8,525 a month, and a 91% rise to US$16,350 means about US$8,560 before. No figure after February 2025 was found, and the pricing page no longer shows prices. The page also shows earlier companies that promised online shops more sales from email, cart reminders and chat, and why they failed.
The numbers, graded
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly recurring revenue, February 2025 | US$16,350 | C | Founder statement, relayed by gaps.com on 13 March 2025, which says he revealed it the week before. Up 91%. | [1] |
| Run rate from the February 2025 figure | US$196,200 a year | calc | Calculated: US$16,350 times 12. This is the headline figure on this page. | [1] |
| Annual recurring revenue, November 2024 | US$102,300 | C | Founder statement, relayed by gaps.com on 10 December 2024: reached while being just a team of two. | [2] |
| Monthly revenue behind the November 2024 figure | about US$8,525 | calc | Calculated: US$102,300 divided by 12. The 91% rise to US$16,350 implies about US$8,560 before (US$16,350 divided by 1.91). The two bases differ by 0.4%, so the two statements agree. | [1, 2] |
| Cash in the bank, early 2025 | US$39,147 | C | Founder statement, relayed by gaps.com. About 2.4 months of revenue at the February 2025 rate (calculated). | [1] |
| Outside money | US$61,500, raised in May 2024 | C | gaps.com, which says it could not find good sources on total funding and that this round might be all of it. No source read for this page names the investors. | [2, 1] |
| Team at the November 2024 figure | 2 people | C | gaps.com, from the founder. No later headcount was found. | [2] |
| Prices in April and November 2024 | Starter US$250 a month for 50,000 emails; Pro US$800 a month for 150,000 emails | C | Archived copies of the pricing page. About US$5.00 and US$5.33 per 1,000 emails (calculated). Add-ons cost US$50 to US$200 a month. | [5] |
| Prices in October 2026 | not published | C | The pricing page lists limits of 25,000 and 100,000 emails a month and a 14-day free trial, with no amounts. | [4] |
| AI model | Azure OpenAI Service from Microsoft; GPT-4 named in an agency case study | C | Terms of service, last updated 22 October 2024, and the Ackermann case study. | [9, 6] |
| Test results reported in case studies | revenue per email sent up 102%, 113% and 95% | C | Shaping New Tomorrow and Fusion, both run by the agency Ackermann, and Coolshop. Tests against the shops' old emails, published on Alvas's own site. No outside party checked them. | [6, 7, 8] |
| Operating company | 404 Technologies Inc., doing business as Alvas.ai | C | Privacy notice and site footer. The terms refer to United States federal and state taxes. The state of incorporation is not stated. | [10, 9, 3] |
| Earliest dated company page | 1 December 2023 | C | The date of the privacy notice. The launch date is not published. The first Wayback Machine copy of www.alvas.ai is from 27 February 2024. | [10, 13] |
| Time from the earliest dated page to the February 2025 figure | 14 months | calc | Calculated: December 2023 to February 2025. | [10, 1] |
How to read this table: a grade C value is a founder statement relayed by gaps.com, or a statement on the company's own pages. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. No value is grade A or B.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter, 2026 | not shown | 25,000 emails a month, 1 market, Klaviyo only | |
| Pro, 2026 | not shown | 100,000 emails a month, 5 markets, all integrations | |
| Enterprise, 2026 | by contract | custom limits, unlimited markets | |
| Starter, 2024 (archived) | 250 | 50,000 emails a month, 1 domain | |
| Pro, 2024 (archived) | 800 | 150,000 emails a month, 5 domains | |
| Starter add-ons, 2024 (archived) | 50 to 200 each | extra domain US$50; Self Learning, Assets, Campaigns US$200 each |
The page offers a 14-day free trial, as it did in 2024. In April and November 2024 the page showed US$250 and US$800 a month, without saying whether that was billed monthly or yearly, and add-ons for Starter: an extra domain for US$50 a month and Self Learning, Assets and Campaigns for US$200 a month each. That is about US$5.00 per 1,000 emails on Starter and US$5.33 on Pro. In both years Enterprise is priced by contract. The 2026 plans count markets instead of domains, and their email limits are lower than in 2024. The shop pays its own email platform separately.
The timeline
From the first dated company page in December 2023 to US$16,350 a month in February 2025, in 14 months. Each entry carries its grade.
- 1 December 2023CDate of the privacy notice of 404 Technologies Inc., doing business as Alvas.ai, the earliest date on the company's pages. [10]
- 27 February 2024CFirst copy of www.alvas.ai in the Wayback Machine. [13]
- 16 April 2024CThe pricing page lists Starter at US$250 a month for 50,000 emails and Pro at US$800 a month for 150,000 emails, with a 14-day free trial. [5]
- May 2024CRaises US$61,500. No source read for this page names the investors. [2, 1]
- 13 June 2024CA blog post by Villads Leth explains the method: few-shot learning to write each email, combined with machine learning. [12]
- 27 to 29 August 2024CCase studies go up on the site. Ackermann, a Danish email marketing agency, used Alvas for clients including Shaping New Tomorrow and Fusion, and Villads Leth calls it the first and only preferred partner. Coolshop reports revenue per email sent up 95% in its test and rolls Alvas out to all its markets. [6, 7, 8]
- 22 October 2024CThe terms of service say the AI runs on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service. [9]
- November 2024CThe founder reports US$102,300 in annual recurring revenue with a team of two (gaps.com, 10 December 2024). [2]
- February 2025CThe founder reports monthly recurring revenue up 91% to US$16,350 and US$39,147 in the bank (gaps.com, 13 March 2025). [1]
- 6 May 2025CVillads Leth, introduced as CEO and founder, talks about AI-written email on the Hello $Firstname podcast. The episode page says he puts the fall in the cost of content creation with AI at a factor of 200. [11]
- 16 October 2026CThe site is online with sign-up and a 14-day free trial. The pricing page shows plan limits but no prices. No revenue figure after February 2025 was found. [3, 4]
Why it worked
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
Writing inside the platform the shop already pays for
Alvas does not replace the email platform. It connects to the shop's Klaviyo account, or Drip, Blueshift and others, and fills in the text of the automated emails that the platform sends, for example the one sent when a customer leaves a cart. The subscriber list and the sending stay with the shop's own platform.
An agency as the first partner
Ackermann, a Danish email marketing agency, came to Alvas to develop the product with it, tested new features first, and then set Alvas up for several of its clients. The founder called it the first and only preferred partner. One agency that runs Klaviyo for many shops gives a team of two access to many customers at once.
Proof in the customer's own numbers
Each case study is a test of the Alvas email against the shop's old email; Fusion's was an A/B test, where half of the recipients get each version, run inside its own Klaviyo account. The case pages report revenue per email sent up 102% for Shaping New Tomorrow, 113% for Fusion and 95% for Coolshop. These are the company's own pages, not audited results.
Languages and markets as the unit of price
An email can be translated into more than 40 languages with one click, and the plans are sized by markets: 1 on Starter, 5 on Pro. A shop that sells in many countries, like Coolshop, has the most to gain, because writing every flow by hand in every language is the most work.
How it was built
These details come from the company's own pages and an agency case study. They are grade C. [9, 6, 12, 17, 3, 4, 10, 2]
- The model: the terms of 22 October 2024 say the AI runs on the Azure OpenAI Service from Microsoft, and that Microsoft does not use the submitted data to train its models. An agency case study says the emails are written with GPT-4.
- The method, from a blog post by Villads Leth of 13 June 2024: few-shot learning, which means putting a few example emails into the prompt, combined with machine learning. The Self Learning feature on the Pro plan is described as an algorithm that adjusts the content toward what converts.
- Integrations: Klaviyo first, the only one on the Starter plan. The integrations page also lists Drip, Blueshift, Shopify, HubSpot, Salesforce, Customer.io, Bloomreach, Agillic, Voyado and Raptor.
- More than 180 prebuilt templates for flows such as abandoned cart, price drop and post-purchase, a tone-of-voice setting, and translation into more than 40 languages.
- Payments: the privacy notice says all payment data is stored by Stripe.
- The company: 404 Technologies Inc., doing business as Alvas.ai, with a team of two at the November 2024 revenue figure.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
The dead that came before
Four companies in the Loot Drop database promised online shops more sales from automated email, cart reminders or chat. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
Ve Interactive
The promiseWin back shoppers who leave their carts, with personalized pop-ups.
Why it diedIt spent US$60 million on growth while being paid only when a sale happened.
Userfox
The promiseSimple automated lifecycle emails and analytics for online shops.
Why it diedMailchimp's position and too little money to keep up with competitors.
Marketfox
The promiseMarketing automation built for e-commerce businesses.
Why it diedLarger and better-funded marketing-automation suites such as Mailchimp took the market.
RightHello
The promiseLive chat that turns e-commerce visitors into buyers with well-timed conversations.
Why it diedIt had US$600,000 against Intercom's US$240 million and could not keep up.
What changed
Each of the four sold online shops a way to turn more visitors or subscribers into buyers, and each lost money or market share to larger platforms. Userfox and Marketfox built their own email-automation products and competed with Mailchimp. RightHello competed with Intercom. Ve Interactive was paid only when a sale happened and spent US$60 million on growth.
Alvas differs in two ways. It does not replace the email platform: it writes the text inside the shop's existing Klaviyo flows and sells through an agency that already runs Klaviyo for its clients, so it works next to the large platforms rather than against them. And the writing costs little, because a rented model writes each email. The same two facts are the risk: the platform can add the feature, and the model belongs to someone else.
Can one person copy it now?
Yes, if you find the agency first.
Nothing in the method needs a large team or a large raise: an AI writer that fills in text inside an email platform that shops already pay for, sold through one agency that runs that platform for many shops, and proven with a test against the shop's old email. The model is rented, so what the business owns is the integrations, the templates and the partner.
Where it is still open: Other automated messages that still use one text for everyone: SMS and push notifications, product descriptions on marketplaces, and email in smaller languages.
- 1Pick one email or CRM platform with an API and many paying shops, and build for it first, as Alvas did with Klaviyo.
- 2Find an agency that runs that platform for many clients, and develop the first version with it.
- 3Run every first customer as a test against the old email, and publish revenue per email sent.
- 4Price by volume and by market, and add translation, because shops that sell in many countries have the most writing to do.
What to watch
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
One relay site, and nothing after February 2025
Both revenue figures are the founder's statements as reported by gaps.com. The original posts were not found, and no payment processor, buyer or journalist has checked the numbers. They agree with each other. No figure after February 2025, twenty months before this page was written, was found, and the pricing page no longer shows prices.
Gmail and Yahoo bulk-sender rules
Since February 2024, Google's sender guidelines require anyone who sends more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts to authenticate the mail with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, records that prove the domain sent it, to offer one-click unsubscribe, and to keep the spam rate in Google's Postmaster Tools below 0.3%. Yahoo set the same 0.3% limit and requires unsubscribes to be honored within 2 days. The shop's own platform sends the mail, so the shop's domain carries the complaints if AI-written emails annoy readers.
Consent rules for marketing email in the EU
Article 13 of EU Directive 2002/58/EC sets an opt-in rule: unsolicited marketing email may be sent only with the recipient's prior agreement. It is a directive, so each member state, Denmark included, applies it through its own law; the Danish law text could not be read for this page. Alvas works on the shop's own subscriber lists and automated flows, not on bought lists, so the consent must come from the shop.
Many funded competitors
gaps.com's own table lists other AI email companies with far more money: Singulate, US$2.3 million pre-seed in January 2025; Bounti, US$16 million seed in September 2024; and 11x, described there as scaling outbound sales with AI personalization, US$50 million Series B in November 2024. Alvas had raised US$61,500. The email platforms that Alvas plugs into could also add the same feature.
A rented model
The terms say the AI runs on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service and that the service relies on third-party providers such as Microsoft. A price change, an outage or a policy change there changes Alvas's costs and product, and competitors can rent the same models.
Who runs it, and where
The sources name one founder. The word co-founder and the phrase their founders in a case study suggest at least one more, who is not named in any source read for this page. The team was two people at the November 2024 figure, and no later headcount was found. The operating company is 404 Technologies Inc., whose terms refer to United States taxes, while the customers in the case studies are Danish.
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- C gaps.com, 13 March 2025: February 2025 income report, insight 22: Alvas.ai, Which Uses AI for Personalised Email Outreach, Grows MRR 91% to $16,350Read the section on Alvas.ai and the comparison table after it. Relays a statement by the founder; the original post was not found. Source for the monthly revenue, the cash and the competitors.
- C gaps.com, 10 December 2024: November 2024 income report, insight 40: Last Month I Shared Three Startups Raising Money to Add AI to Email OutReach. Now I'm Introducing One That Just Hit $100,000 in ARRRead the section on Alvas.ai. Relays a statement by the founder. Source for the annual recurring revenue, the team of two and the May 2024 raise.
- C Alvas.ai home page, read 16 October 2026Read in full. Source for the product description, the templates, the languages and the operating company in the footer.
- C Alvas.ai pricing page, read 16 October 2026Read in full. It shows plan limits and a free trial but no prices.
- C Wayback Machine copies of the Alvas.ai pricing page, 16 April 2024 and 7 November 2024Read both copies in full. Source for the last published prices and add-ons.
- C Alvas.ai case study, published 27 August 2024: Ackermann x Shaping New Tomorrow, the first ever AI generated Abandoned Cart emailRead in full. Source for GPT-4, the test results and the founder's quote about the partner.
- C Alvas.ai case study, published 27 August 2024: Ackermann doubled the Revenue Per Email for Fusion, by using AlvasRead in full. Source for the agency, the A/B test in Klaviyo and the results.
- C Alvas.ai case study, published 29 August 2024: Coolshop x Alvas x RaptorRead in full. Source for the Coolshop test results and the rollout to all markets.
- C Alvas.ai Terms of Service, last updated 22 October 2024Read the sections on AI services, taxes and subprocessors. Source for Azure OpenAI Service.
- C Alvas.ai privacy notice, last updated 1 December 2023Read the sections on the company and on payment data. Source for 404 Technologies Inc. and Stripe.
- C Hello $Firstname podcast, 6 May 2025: From Prompts to Personalization: How AI is Rewriting Email Marketing, with Villads Leth, CEO and Founder of Alvas.aiRead the episode page in full; the audio was not heard. Confirms the founder's role in May 2025.
- C Alvas.ai blog, 13 June 2024, by Villads Leth: Few Shot LearningRead in full. The founder's own post. Source for the method.
- C Wayback Machine capture list for alvas.aiRead in full. Source for the first copy of the site, 27 February 2024.
- C Google Workspace Admin Help: Email sender guidelinesRead the sections on requirements for all senders and for senders of 5,000 or more messages a day. The rule-maker's own page.
- C Yahoo Sender Hub: Sender best practices and requirementsRead the section on sender requirements. The rule-maker's own page.
- C Wikipedia: Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002Read the section on unsolicited email. The official text on EUR-Lex could not be downloaded.
- C Alvas.ai integrations page, read 16 October 2026Read in full. Source for the list of email and CRM platforms.
- C Loot Drop database export of failed startupsLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.