OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor and former Google employee Clay Bavor have finally launched a new AI startup called Sierra which was originally announced in February last year.
Taylor, renowned for his contributions at Facebook, Salesforce, and OpenAI, is now working on conversational AI chatbots in Sierra. The startup has successfully garnered a significant amount of funding, a crucial asset considering the competitive landscape of its domain.
Although an AI chatbot is nothing new in the modern day, Sierra says that its offerings are a lot more than that. The company says that its software goes beyond simply being an extension of an FAQ page, but actually helps customers take actions to save their time.
Here is what Sierra says in its blog post: “Sierra agents can do so much more than just answer questions. They take action using your systems, from upgrading a subscription in your customer database to managing the complexities of furniture delivery in your order management system. Agents can reason, problem solve, and make decisions.”
With his experience at Salesforce, engaging with major enterprise clients, Taylor is well aware of the challenges such as hallucinations, where a large language model may fabricate responses when it doesn’t have the necessary information to answer correctly. This issue is particularly critical for large corporations that have their brand reputation on the line. The company asserts that it is addressing and solving these hallucination problems.
Simultaneously, the company is integrating with various enterprise systems to execute tasks for customers autonomously, without human intervention. Achieving these ambitious goals will undoubtedly be a complex endeavor.
Before teaming up with Taylor, Bavor spent seven years at Google, leading the AR and VR departments. Taylor, too, has a history with Google, having worked there in the early 2000s.
Beyond his role at Sierra, Taylor holds the position of chairman of the board at OpenAI, following his tenure on Twitter’s board. His departure from Twitter (which is now known as X) occurred when Elon Musk disbanded the board shortly after acquiring the company in October 2022. X also has its own chatbot now called Grok, but it is only available to paying users.
