Openai’s board chairman Bret Taylor will be attending the annual Allen and Company Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference held on July 8, 2025 at Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Bret Taylor’s artificial intelligence startup Sierra joined an exclusive club. The company boasts a new $10 billion valuation after raising $350 million in fresh capital.
Sierra is one of only a handful of AI startups, including Openai, Humanity, Xai, and thinking machines worth more than $10 billion if they’re safe and hard.
Investors are pouring their money into this competitive group of companies in hopes that they will eventually make it into the public market.
Taylor is chairman of Openai’s board of directors and previously served as co-CEO. Salesforce Along with Mark Benioff. Taylor co-founded Sierra in 2023. The company builds and implements AI agents for customer service. AI agents can perform tasks autonomously on behalf of users.
Salesforce shares fell 5% on Thursday after the company reported weak guidance, leaving concerns about how AI is affecting software companies.
Sierra said the agents are already being used by “least hundreds of millions of people” and are helping with tasks like refinancing homes, ordering lunches, providing furniture, understanding insurance deductions and modifying technology.
Greenoaks is leading Sierra’s latest funding round, the company said. That rating has more than doubled from the latest salary increase in October.
“We’ve been in this for a long time,” Sierra said in a blog post Thursday.
The company said it will use fresh funds to invest in the platform and focus on domestic and international expansion.
Sierra’s funding follows a surge in other major AI in Silicon Valley. Earlier this week, humanity announced it had ended its $13 billion funding with a $183 billion money valuation.
Watch: Sierra co-founder Bret Taylor on the role of AI agents in the evolving global landscape
