Bret Taylor says he announced he was leaving Salesforce within days of ChatGPT's release.
“I happened to announce I was leaving Salesforce within a few days of ChatGPT coming out.”
Person
Bret Taylor
5 episodes · 94 quoted claims
- 11 Sep 2025Sierra CEO Bret Taylor on why the AI bubble feels like the dotcom boom55m
- 20 Nov 2024How agentic AI will save customer service, with Bret Taylor38m
- 19 Sep 2024Transforming Customer Service through Company Agents, with Sierra’s Bret Taylor48m
- 3 Sep 2024Bret Taylor - The Agent Era - [Invest Like the Best, EP.386]1h 28m
- 8 Aug 2024OpenAI’s Bret Taylor: Your business can’t wait until AI is perfect39m
Bret Taylor says he decided to start Sierra during a lunch with Clay Bavor, whom he had known for twenty years, without having planned to found a company together.
“ended up having, uh, lunch with Clay Bavor, who I'd known for twenty years and not planning to start a company with him”
Bret Taylor says Sierra's customers include ADT Home Security, Ramp and Sirius XM, which use its AI agents to answer customer calls.
“everyone from ADT Home Security to Ramp in New York to Sirius XM are using it to answer the phone when you call them up”
Sierra charges most customers a fee only when its AI agent autonomously resolves a case, according to Bret Taylor.
“we charge only for outcomes. So for most of our customers, that means when the AI agent autonomously resolves the case that you called about or chatted in about, there's a fee for that.”
Bret Taylor says Sierra does not charge when its AI agent has to transfer a conversation to a human.
“And if the AI agent has to transfer to a real person, it's free.”
Bret Taylor estimates that answering a customer phone call costs roughly ten to twenty dollars in labor and technology.
“say it's somewhere between ten and twenty dollars to answer the phone”
Bret Taylor says large language models reduce the cost of a phone call by roughly two orders of magnitude.
“you bring down the cost of a phone call by not one, but two orders of magnitude”
Bret Taylor says some Sierra retail customers let shoppers photograph damaged goods and have an AI agent approve a warranty claim immediately.
“We have retailers where you can take a photo of your damaged goods and immediately adjudicate a warranty claim”
Bret Taylor says voice is already a bigger part of Sierra's platform than text, although voice launched only the previous November.
“voice is already a bigger part of our platform than text, uh, which is kind of remarkable since we launched it in November of last year.”
Bret Taylor says Sierra fine-tunes existing AI models but does not pre-train its own.
“We do a lot of fine-tuning. We don't pre-train any models.”
Bret Taylor says a single response from a Sierra agent typically requires twenty or more inference calls to AI models.
“For any given message for to one of the agents on our platform, probably twenty plus inference calls just to generate one response.”
Bret Taylor says current AI systems already meet the definition of artificial general intelligence he would have used three years earlier.
“I think we are already at what I would have defined AGI at three years ago.”
Bret Taylor defines superintelligence as AI that is more intelligent than humans, and says the term matters for safety research.
“Superintelligence, I think, literally just means that it is more intelligent than humans.”
Bret Taylor cites Pets.com and Webvan as famous failures of the dotcom bubble while arguing the internet still produced giants like Amazon and Google.
“a lot of people think about the flops like pets dot com and WebVan.”
Bret Taylor notes that many companies that built out fiber in the early internet era went bankrupt, but the fiber was later used by others.
“the people who built out fiber in the, um, early days of the internet, a lot of them went bankrupt, but that fiber ended up getting used”
Bret Taylor says a story about him rewriting Google Maps over a weekend is mostly true and a little embellished.
“there's this like story that goes on around me about rewriting Google Maps, and and it's like, mostly true and a little embellished, like many great stories are.”
Bret Taylor cites the film Hidden Figures, about women who did the math calculations for the moon landing, as a parallel to software engineers facing automation.
“Hidden Figures. It's a great Disney movie about the, uh, putting people on the moon, but in particular, the women who did the math calculations to do it.”
Bret Taylor criticizes the MIT study on enterprise AI spending, saying it conflated companies building their own AI software with companies buying ready-made AI products.
“That study, I don't know the basis for the, um, data in that study. I think it was problematic because it conflated people building their own software with AI and buying solutions off the shelf.”
Bret Taylor says Sierra has a roughly 100% success rate moving customers from proof of concept to going live.
“We have, uh, basically 100% success rate with our customers doing a proof of concept and going live with our platform.”
Bret Taylor says OpenAI is unusual among AI organizations because it is a nonprofit driven by its mission.
“OpenAI is a unusual organization compared to most in the AI space because it's a nonprofit.”
Bret Taylor says economist Larry Summers is a member of the OpenAI board.
“We've got Larry Summers, who's one of the world's great economists.”
Bret Taylor says Paul Nakasone, who formerly led the US National Security Agency, sits on the OpenAI board.
“Paul Nakasone, who ran the National Security Administration, is on the board.”
Bret Taylor says Clay Bavor is his co-founder at Sierra, and that they studied which areas AI would affect first before choosing customer service.
“So Clay Bavor, my co-founder, and I spend a lot of time thinking about what are the areas that will be impacted first.”
Bret Taylor says SiriusXM's AI agent, named Harmony, handles subscription upgrades and downgrades and is powered by Sierra's platform.
“if you have a Sirius XM subscription and you want to upgrade or downgrade your your subscription, you'll chat with Harmony, their AI agent.”
Bret Taylor says Weight Watchers' 24/7 Live Coaching tab in its app is now powered by AI built on Sierra's platform.
“If you're a Weight Watchers member, there's a tab in their app called 24/7 Live Coaching, and it's now powered by AI and built on our platform.”
Bret Taylor says that when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, few expected people would write most of their email by typing on a touch screen.
“I imagine in 2007, when Steve Jobs, uh, introduced the iPhone, few of us would have contemplated that we'd send nearly 100 of our email by thumb typing on a touch screen.”
Bret Taylor says Sierra's thesis is that within five to ten years the main way people interact digitally will be conversation with AI.
“Our thesis is the same thing will happen with conversational experiences. Uh, that in five or ten years, the main way we will interact digitally is by having a conversation with AI.”
Bret Taylor says earlier chat models were developed using a technique called instruction tuning, which helps explain why they are empathetic out of the box.
“the earlier chat models were developed was with this technique called instruction tuning.”
Bret Taylor argues that cutting the cost of a customer conversation by one or two orders of magnitude could let brands hold far more conversations with customers.
“if you can bring down the cost of a customer conversation by one or even two orders of magnitude, how many more conversations can you have with your customers?”
Bret Taylor says the shorts brand Chubbies has an AI agent named Duncan Smothers with a sarcastic, fun personality.
“Their AI agent is named Duncan Smothers, and he's got a little sarcasm, he's a little fun”
Bret Taylor says Sierra trains its AI agents on the same training materials companies give their best human associates, including brand books and voice guidelines.
“So fundamentally, we take all the training materials you provide your best associates on it.”
Bret Taylor says some Sierra customers call the customer experience leaders who manage their AI agent 'AI architects', a new kind of role.
“a lot of our customers call their customer experience leaders who work on their AI agent, the AI architects”
Bret Taylor says AI may displace some jobs, as the automated teller machine displaced the role of a bank teller, though he does not know the net effect on customer service employment.
“all forms of AI may displace some jobs, just like the automated teller machine, you know, displaced the role of a bank teller.”
Bret Taylor cites Microsoft Copilot and Cursor, which his company uses, as examples of AI agents that help software engineers code.
“Microsoft Copilot, Cursor, which is a cool startup that my company uses.”
Bret Taylor points to Harvey as an AI startup focused on legal work.
“maybe you should talk to Harvey. That's a cool AI startup that's more narrowly focused on that.”
Bret Taylor says nuclear energy lost society's trust through multiple incidents, which he uses as a warning for AI.
“because there's been multiple moments of violating society's trust, uh, society sort of revoked our license to to invest in nuclear.”
Bret Taylor credits the creation of GPT-3, GPT-4 and ChatGPT, built by people including some who have left, as the reason OpenAI exists in its current form.
“I wouldn't be in this chair if not for the creation of GPT three, GPT four, ChatGPT, and it's transformed society.”
Retrieval augmented generation combines a large language model with a database of content so that answers are grounded in a company's own information rather than the model's pre-trained knowledge.
“you take a large language model, and rather than using the model and its innate knowledge from the pre-training process to, um, emit answers, you combine that model with a database of content”
Sonos customers who buy a speaker or have technical problems chat with a Sonos AI agent powered by Sierra for onboarding and troubleshooting.
“if you buy a new Sonos speaker or you're having technical issues with your speaker, you get the dreaded flashing orange light, you'll now chat with the Sonos AI, which is powered by Sierra to help you onboard”
SiriusXM's customer-facing AI agent, named Harmony, handles tasks such as upgrading and downgrading subscription levels.
“If you're a Sirius XM subscriber, their AI agent is named Harmony, which I think is a delightful name, and, uh, it's everything from upgrading and downgrading your subscription level”