Topic
36 facts from 7 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
Undated
Sierra is a conversational AI platform that helps consumer brands build branded conversational AI agents.
“So Sierra is a conversational AI platform, which is a very big concept, but we have a very specific focus, which is helping consumer brands around the world build branded conversational AI agents.”
Undated
Reid Hoffman disclosed that he is an investor in Sierra and a longtime colleague and friend of Bret Taylor.
“And just to note, I'm an investor in Sierra, and I consider Bret a longtime colleague and friend.”
Undated
Sierra has allocated some of its equity to issues around job displacement and reskilling, according to Bret Taylor.
“And at our company, Sierra, we've allocated some of our equity to be devoted, uh, to issues around job displacement and reskilling.”
Undated
Taylor says SiriusXM's AI agent, Harmony, is built on Sierra's platform.
“If you're a Sirius XM subscriber, you can chat with Harmony, which is their AI agent they've built on our platform.”
Undated
Taylor recalls that an early Sierra shoe-retailer customer received a chat asking for sandal recommendations for a Hawaii wedding, which the agent could not answer at first.
“I'm going to a wedding in Hawaii. What sandals will go with my bridesmaid dress?”
Undated
Taylor says it takes one to three months for a new customer to launch a Sierra agent, with Sierra working closely with the customer.
“Between one and three months. We have a model where we have a really hold the hands of all of our customers”
Undated
Sierra has a process it calls the agent development life cycle, modeled on the software development life cycle, for building reliable AI agents.
“we have a process we call the agent development life cycle, which is the name comes from saying the software development life cycle.”
Undated
Sierra layers AI models, with one model supervising another, to make agent behavior statistically more robust.
“having one AI model supervise another AI model to layer different models on top of each other to produce statistically more robust results”
Undated
Bret Taylor and Sierra co-founder Clay Bavor have an internal bet about when conversations with company agents will be mostly personal AI agents rather than people.
“we have an internal bet about when the conversational traffic to our company agents will be more personal agents than people”
Undated
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”
Undated
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”
Undated
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”
Undated
Sierra's platform is called Agent OS, and customers use it to define the goals and guardrails of their customer experience.
“our customers, you know, in our platform, which we call Agent OS, are essentially defining the goals and the guardrails of their customer experience.”
Undated
Sierra uses outcome-based pricing, charging customers for the job done rather than for model tokens.
“At Sierra, we're really focused on what we call outcome-based pricing, you know, charging for the job done.”
Undated
Sierra uses supervisor models, in which one AI model oversees another, to enforce limits such as avoiding medical or financial advice.
“And we do a lot of what we call supervisor models, so we have models supervising other models.”
Undated
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.”
Undated
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.”
Undated
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.”
Undated
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.”
Undated
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?”
Undated
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”
Undated
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.”
Undated
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”
Undated
Sierra raised a new funding round in the week of the episode that valued the company at $10 billion.
“Just this week, Sierra raised a new round of funding, valuing it at $10 billion.”
Undated
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”
Undated
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”
Undated
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.”
Undated
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.”
Undated
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”
Undated
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.”
Undated
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.”
Undated
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.”
Undated
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.”
Undated
Pereyra said Harvey's forward deployed engineering program resembles Sierra's agent engineering program rather than Palantir's model.
“I would say this is closer to, like, Sierra's agent engineering Um program.”
Undated
Brett Taylor is chairman of OpenAI and founder of Sierra, a customer service AI agent startup.
“I had a conversation with Brett Taylor, who's the chairman of Open AI, but the founder of Sierra, which is another customer service agentic startup.”
Undated
Sierra measures its AI agents using a blend of handoff rate to humans and customers' net promoter scores.
“So now they have a combined metric of proportion of handoff calls, but also net promoter scores from customers who've experienced interacting with the agent.”
Episodes