Sierra, AI Agent Startup Led by Ex-Salesforce Co-CEO, Raises $350M at $10B Valuation

Bret Taylor's Sierra raises $350M at a $10B valuation | TechCrunch

Investors are clearly bullish about former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor's AI agent startup Sierra. Sierra, which helps enterprises build customer service AI agents, announced it raised a $350 million funding round on Thursday. The round, led by earlier investor Greenoaks Capital, values the startup at $10 billion, according to a company blog post that confirmed an earlier report from Axios on Wednesday. Sierra was founded in early 2024 by Taylor and longtime Google alum Clay Bavor. The company claims to have landed hundreds of customers, including SoFi, Ramp, and Brex, among others, in its 18 months of operation. Sierra has now raised $635 million altogether, including a $110 million that closed in February of last year led by Sequoia and Benchmark, and a $175 million round that closed in October of last year led by Greenoaks. Others of its investors include ICONIQ and Thrive Capital. As TechCrunch has previously reported, Taylor and Bavor have a long history in customer service tech. Taylor spent nearly a decade at Salesforce and years ago founded Quip, which Salesforce bought for $750 million in the summer of 2016. Bavor managed Gmail and Google Drive at Google, among other consumer-facing products. Taylor met Bavor while at Google, where he worked before serving as Facebook's CTO for several years. At Google, Taylor is widely credited with helping to launch Google Maps. Years later, he'd oversee the Twitter board throughout the social media site's takeover by Elon Musk. Earlier this week, in fact, Taylor announced that Sierra is launching its second year of its so-called APX program, a rotational opportunity for recent technical graduates that directly mirrors the Google program that launched both Taylor's and co-founder Clay Bavor's careers two decades ago. The hiring announcement stands out in what has become an increasingly tough job market, particularly as companies assess the power of AI technologies like those Sierra is selling and their potential impact on workforce needs. The program targets computer science graduates and says it offers experience in both agent engineering and product management. Taylor described the roles as providing what he calls "an irresponsible amount of responsibility" -- similar to the freedom to build and launch products that he and Bavor had at Google -- with new graduates expected to work on multiple product launches during their first year.

Ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor's Sierra is the latest $10 billion AI startup

Bret Taylor, chairman of the board of directors of OpenAI, attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 8, 2025. Bret Taylor's artificial intelligence startup Sierra has just joined an exclusive club: The company sports a new $10 billion valuation after raising $350 million in fresh capital. Sierra is one of just a handful of AI startups, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machines that are valued at or above $10 billion. Investors are pouring money into this competitive group of companies in the hopes that they'll eventually hit the public markets. Taylor is the chairman of OpenAI's board, and previously served as co-CEO of Salesforce alongside Marc Benioff. Taylor co-founded Sierra in 2023. The company builds and implements AI agents for customer service. AI agents can carry out tasks autonomously on behalf of their users. Shares of Salesforce fell 5% Thursday after the company reported weak guidance and concerns lingered about how AI is affecting software companies.

OpenAI Chairman's Sierra to Raise $350 Million: Report

Sierra, which helps enterprises build AI agents, is also on track to cross $100 million in ARR. Sierra, a company that develops AI agents for enterprise customer service, is close to finalising a deal to raise $350 million in funding at a valuation of $10 billion, Axios reported citing sources familiar with the matter. The report added that the funding will be led by Greenoaks Capital, and Sierra is on track to exceed $100 million in enterprise annual recurring revenue (ARR). The company's founders include Bret Taylor, who serves as the chairman of OpenAI, and Clay Bavor, who spent over 18 years at Google, leading Google Labs and Google Workspace. Sierra's Agent OS is a platform for building, deploying and managing AI agents for customer service. It enables enterprises to tailor agents with brand guidelines, provide reliable omnichannel support, and integra

AI agent startup Sierra reportedly raising funding at $10B valuation - SiliconANGLE

AI agent startup Sierra reportedly raising funding at $10B valuation Sierra Technologies Inc., an artificial intelligence startup with high-profile founders, is reportedly close to raising capital at a $10 billion valuation. Axios on Tuesday cited sources as saying that the company is set to receive $350 million in the round. Greenoaks Capital is expected to lead the investment. The venture capital firm led a $175 million round for Sierra last year at a $4.5 billion valuation. Sierra was launched in 2023 by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor. Taylor (left) is a one-time Co-Chief Executive Officer of Salesforce Inc. who currently serves as OpenAI's board chair. Bavor (right) is a former Google LLC executive who led the search giant's Google Labs product development group. Sierra provides a software toolkit that companies can use to create AI agents. The Agent SDK, as it's called, includes pre-packaged building blocks that remove the need for developers to write everything from scratch. One of the toolkit's components makes it easier to equip agents with web search features. The others ease tasks such as processing customer support requests. According to Sierra, companies can also use Agent SDK to create guardrails for their agents. A bank, for example, might wish to ensure that a technical support agent always answers common financial questions the same way. Minimizing prompt response variations can help reduce the risk of hallucinations. Sierra provides a second development tool, Agent Studio, that allows business users to customize agents without writing code. Marketers can embed their company's logo into a chatbot's welcome message. A support team, meanwhile, could improve a support agent's troubleshooting skills by uploading knowledge base articles. After a company completes the development of an AI agent, it can use Sierra's software to test that everything works as expected. The platform makes it possible to simulate customer conversations and measure how well an agent responds. Once the agent is in production, Sierra can track the effectiveness with which it answers real-world requests. The company also provides features for a number of adjacent use cases. According to Sierra, its platform can identify areas for improvement in an organization's knowledge base. Additionally, it includes a dashboard that measures the business impact of AI agent projects.

Updated: AI agent startup Sierra raises $350M in funding at $10B valuation - SiliconANGLE

Updated: AI agent startup Sierra raises $350M in funding at $10B valuation Sierra Technologies Inc., an artificial intelligence startup with high-profile founders, is raising capital at a $10 billion valuation, the company confirmed Thursday. Sierra said it's raising $350 million in the round. Greenoaks Capital is expected to lead the investment. The venture capital firm led a $175 million round for Sierra last year at a $4.5 billion valuation. Sierra was launched in 2023 by Bret Taylor (pictured, left) and Clay Bavor (right). Taylor is a onetime co-chief executive of Salesforce Inc. who currently serves as OpenAI's board chair. Bavor is a former Google LLC executive who led the search giant's Google Labs product development group. Sierra provides a software toolkit that companies can use to create AI agents. The Agent SDK, as it's called, includes pre-packaged building blocks that remove the need for developers to write everything from scratch. One of the toolkit's components makes it easier to equip agents with web search features. The others ease tasks such as processing customer support requests. According to Sierra, companies can also use Agent SDK to create guardrails for their agents. A bank, for example, might wish to ensure that a technical support agent always answers common financial questions the same way. Minimizing prompt response variations can help reduce the risk of hallucinations. Sierra provides a second development tool, Agent Studio, that allows business users to customize agents without writing code. Marketers can embed their company's logo into a chatbot's welcome message. A support team, meanwhile, could improve a support agent's troubleshooting skills by uploading knowledge base articles. After a company completes the development of an AI agent, it can use Sierra's software to test that everything works as expected. The platform makes it possible to simulate customer conversations and measure how well an agent responds. Once the agent is in production, Sierra can track the effectiveness with which it answers real-world requests. The company also provides features for a number of adjacent use cases. According to Sierra, its platform can identify areas for improvement in an organization's knowledge base. Additionally, it includes a dashboard that measures the business impact of AI agent projects.

AI agent startup Sierra nears $350 million round at $10 billion valuation - The Economic Times

AI startup Sierra is close to raising $350 million, led by Greenoaks Capital, valuing it at $10 billion. The company, founded in 2023, builds AI chatbots for large enterprises and is nearing $100 million in enterprise annual recurring revenue. AI agents remain a growing focus, with new competition from Elon Musk's xAI.AI agent startup Sierra is close to raising $350 million in new funding, with Greenoaks Capital set to lead the round, according to Axios. The deal would value Sierra at $10 billion. The company is also expected to cross $100 million in enterprise annual recurring revenue, the report said. Sierra last raised $175 million in October 2024, in a round also led by Greenoaks, at a $4.5 billion valuation. Thrive Capital and Iconiq also participated in that round. Founded in 2023 by former Salesforce co-CEO and current OpenAI chair Bret Taylor, along with ex-Google executive Clay Bavor, Sierra develops AI-powered chatbots designed to handle customer service for large businesses. Clients include well-known names such as WeightWatchers and Sirius XM. In June, the company stated on X that around 15% of its customers generate over $10 billion in annual revenue, while about half make more than $1 billion a year. AI agents have become a key area of focus across the tech industry this year, and big players such as Microsoft and OpenAI are exploring different approaches on how to best build and use them. Although a bit late to the game, Elon Musk's AI startup xAI entered the field last week with grok-code-fast-1, a new coding agent that it described as fast and cost-efficient.

OpenAI Chair's Conversational AI Startup Raises $350 Million | PYMNTS.com

The 18-month-old startup offers a platform that enables companies to build and deploy AI-powered chatbots that can answer a variety of questions and even take action for consumers. It's a step up from the rule-based chatbots of old that are stymied by things like misspellings. For example, a shopper looking to buy flowers at a flower shop engages with an AI chatbot built on Sierra's Agent OS platform. The chatbot can understand the shopper even with misspelled queries. It can offer alternative recommendations if a product is out of stock, change a shopper's order and even charge the customer's card on file. Many of today's customer-service chatbots don't respond that way. Most are pre-programmed to deliver set responses. A customer who asks a question outside those parameters gets a confused answer. Nearly three years after ChatGPT debuted, many company chatbots remain dumb. Meanwhile, consumers are moving toward smarter AI chatbots. According to PYMNTS Intelligence data, two-thirds of Gen Z consumers already use ChatGPT and other AI chatbots for work and personal chores, while 52% of millennials said they use it for their jobs. Despite changing consumer behavior, many chatbots remain robotic. At a conference in February, Taylor discussed why this was the case, saying companies face tradeoffs when deploying AI chatbots. On the one hand, chatbots can respond with free-form conversations and say whatever they want, which can be risky. But the other option is to restrict the chatbot and it becomes a "robot," he said, leading to a poor customer experience. Sierra aims to solve this problem. The startup said it already has "hundreds" of customers spanning financial services, healthcare, telecom, retail and consumer services. More than 20% of clients have revenue of over $10 billion and over half have revenues of more than $1 billion. The AI chatbots built on Sierra's platform perform a variety of everyday interactions, from refinancing homes and resolving billing disputes to fixing home alarms and delivering furniture. Taylor and Bavor said Sierra aims to move beyond customer service into sales and engagement. Greenoaks, which had backed Databricks, Scale.ai and Canva, led the latest funding round. Early investors include the storied Sequoia Capital -- which famously backed Apple, Google, Airbnb, Nvidia and many others early on -- and Benchmark, which had backed eBay and Uber. Sierra's founders said it will use the new funds for its Agent OS platform, expand U.S. offices beyond ones in San Francisco, New York and Atlanta, and fund international growth across Europe and Asia. "We want to bring Sierra to every company in the world, and it starts with having a presence in all parts of it," they wrote. "The opportunity ahead is enormous -- for our customers, their customers, and Sierra." Read more: Why AI Chatbots Are the New 'Must-Have' for Online Retailers OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor Launches AI Chatbot Startup Sierra