Sierra, a customer service AI startup led by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, has just secured $175 million in new funding from Greenoaks Capital, quadrupling its valuation to a remarkable $4.5 billion. This funding comes shortly after its January fundraise, which pegged Sierra at $1 billion, making this one of Silicon Valley’s most talked-about ventures.
This funding boost highlights the strong interest Sierra has stirred since its public launch less than a year ago, particularly as one of the standout startups in Silicon Valley. Greenoaks Capital led this latest round, joined by Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital and Iconiq, underscoring the momentum Sierra has gained in AI.
This latest round follows Sierra’s initial $110 million raise led by Sequoia and Benchmark, which had initially valued the company at close to $1 billion. Notably, Taylor, who chairs OpenAI’s board and was once chairman of Twitter during Elon Musk’s takeover discussions, is no stranger to big tech moves. His co-founder, Clay Bavor, brings nearly two decades of experience from Google, where he led Google Labs and advanced VR initiatives.
According to Reuters and other news media outlets, Murati is currently discussing with venture capitalists to secure $100 million in funding for her new initiative, which aims to develop AI products based on proprietary models.
The wave of ex-OpenAI executives launching new ventures highlights broader dynamics within the AI industry. Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s co-founder and former Chief Scientist, has launched “Safe Superintelligence Inc.” a startup dedicated to developing safe artificial superintelligence (ASI). The company recently secured $1 billion in funding, although its ambitions remain research-oriented with no immediate commercial returns.
Andrej Karpathy, another influential figure from OpenAI and former Head of AI at Tesla, has founded a venture focused on new AI-based educational initiatives. Meanwhile, Jan Leike, once co-leader of OpenAI’s Superalignment team, has joined competitor Anthropic to focus on AI safety alongside John Schulman, a co-founder of OpenAI and a key contributor to ChatGPT.
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