Sierra, Co-Founded by Bret Taylor, Raises $350M at $10B Valuation
▼ Summary
– Sierra, an AI agent startup co-founded by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, raised a $350 million funding round led by Greenoaks Capital, valuing the company at $10 billion.
– The company helps enterprises build customer service AI agents and has secured hundreds of customers, including SoFi, Ramp, and Brex, since its founding in early 2024.
– Sierra has raised a total of $635 million, with previous rounds including $110 million led by Sequoia and Benchmark and $175 million led by Greenoaks, with additional investors like ICONIQ and Thrive Capital.
– The founders have extensive backgrounds in tech: Taylor co-founded Quip and held leadership roles at Salesforce and Facebook, while Bavor managed products like Gmail and Google Drive at Google.
– Sierra is launching a rotational program for recent technical graduates, modeled after Google’s program, offering experience in agent engineering and product management with significant responsibility.
Sierra, the AI agent startup co-founded by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, has secured a massive $350 million funding round, achieving a remarkable $10 billion valuation. This latest investment, led by Greenoaks Capital, underscores the immense confidence investors have in the company’s vision to transform enterprise customer service through advanced artificial intelligence.
Launched in early 2024 by Taylor and Google veteran Clay Bavor, Sierra has rapidly attracted hundreds of enterprise clients, including prominent names like SoFi, Ramp, and Brex. In just 18 months of operation, the company has demonstrated impressive traction in a competitive market. With this new injection of capital, Sierra’s total funding now stands at $635 million, following earlier rounds of $110 million and $175 million led by Sequoia, Benchmark, and Greenoaks, with additional backing from ICONIQ and Thrive Capital.
Both founders bring deep expertise in customer-facing technology. Taylor spent nearly a decade at Salesforce and previously founded Quip, which was acquired by Salesforce for $750 million. Bavor, during his tenure at Google, managed flagship products including Gmail and Google Drive. The two first crossed paths at Google, where Taylor played a pivotal role in the launch of Google Maps before later serving as Facebook’s CTO and overseeing Twitter’s board during Elon Musk’s acquisition.
In a strategic move echoing their own career origins, Sierra recently announced the second year of its APX program, a rotational initiative for recent technical graduates. Modeled after the Google program that helped launch both Taylor and Bavor decades ago, APX offers computer science graduates hands-on experience in agent engineering and product management. Taylor emphasizes that participants receive what he describes as “an irresponsible amount of responsibility,” mirroring the autonomy he and Bavor enjoyed early in their careers.
This hiring initiative arrives at a time when the job market is increasingly competitive, and businesses are closely evaluating how AI technologies might reshape workforce demands. Sierra’s program is designed to place new graduates at the forefront of product development, expecting them to contribute to multiple product launches within their first year. This approach not only cultivates talent but also reinforces Sierra’s commitment to innovation and leadership in the AI agent space.
(Source: TechCrunch)
