Artificial intelligence startup Sierra, co-founded by formersalesperson Co-chief executive Bret Taylor more than quadrupled its valuation to $4.5 billion in the new funding round.
The San Francisco-based company, which was valued at $1 billion in January, raised $175 million in a funding round led by Greenoaks Capital. information It was reported earlier this month that Sierra was raising capital.
Taylor is chairman of the OpenAI board of directors and previously ran Salesforce with Marc Benioff. Elon Musk was still chairman of Twitter when he negotiated to buy the social media company. Taylor is a veteran entrepreneur widely credited with helping create Google Maps. exist GoogleWhile there, he met Sierra co-founder Clay Bavor, who had worked at the tech giant for nearly two decades, leading its virtual reality efforts and Google Labs.
Sierra focuses on helping businesses like home security companies ADT, sonosWeight Watchers and Casper personalize and implement artificial intelligence agents to provide customer service. Taylor and Bavor launched the startup earlier this year.
“We think every company in the world, whether it’s a technology company or a 150-year-old company like ADT, can benefit from artificial intelligence, and the technology is ready now,” Taylor told CNBC. “We want Sierra to meet the needs of this market, and that means expanding internationally and into other industries. ”
ICONIQ and Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital participated in the new funding round.
Taylor describes Sierra as “conversational artificial intelligence” and is outraged by the term “chatbot,” going so far as to ban the phrase from the company’s offices in downtown San Francisco. Taylor said Serra is looking to create more conversational interactions. He pointed to the ease of use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and compared it to the frustrating experience of talking to an airline bot.
“When you think of chatbots, you think of those annoying robot things — you can feel the difference,” Taylor said, adding that Sierra is making its agents more “empathetic and conversational.”
Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor speaks at the Viva Technology Conference in Paris on June 15, 2022.
Nathan Lane | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Sierra’s team lets each client customize the agency’s personality to fit their corporate brand. Clothing company Chubbies, for example, took a more ironic route by hiring a younger-sounding agent named Duncan Smothers. Taylor said some luxury brands are opting for a more serious British accent.
“We do believe that conversational AI agents should not only be transactional but should be brand ambassadors,” Taylor said. “It’s really an expression of your values. So do you want to be sarcastic? Do you want to use emojis? ? Do you want it to sound like a text message, or do you want it to sound like a lawyer?”
Sierra uses the model “constellation” and “supervisor” described by Bavor and Taylor. The technique uses one model to do the heavy lifting, which is not expected to be 100% reliable, but uses a second model as a backup to “check” the other models and help improve accuracy. The company currently relies on OpenAI, Anthropic and Yuanwait.
There is competition in this field. Taylor’s former company, Salesforce, and MicrosoftIn partnership with OpenAI, the field of artificial intelligence agents is being explored. Taylor compared Sierra to companies building cloud software on top of it Amazon Web services and other cloud infrastructure.
“In the cloud era, you have Shoppingsales staff, Immediate service and adobe — I think the same thing will play out in artificial intelligence in Sierra,” Taylor said. “We’re helping their brand to be a client-facing agency.
He mentioned startups like Cursor (which produces coding agencies) and Harvey (which produces legal agencies).
Sierra’s funding follows a series of major AI announcements from Silicon Valley. OpenAI has raised billions of dollars and is valued at $157 billion. A source confirmed to CNBC that Perplexity is in the midst of a funding round that values the company at $9 billion. According to CB Insights, one-third of all venture capital investment this year has gone to artificial intelligence startups.
“When a technology wave like this happens, I think a lot of people are trying to place bets,” Taylor said. “I don’t know which company is going to win, but it’s definitely a smart investment. Obviously, customer experience and customer service is a huge opportunity and I think we’re the leader in this space so we see a lot of demand.”
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