Bret Taylor’s Sierra reaches $100M ARR in under two years

Sierra, a 21-month-old San Francisco-based startup building AI customer service agents for enterprises, announced on Friday, it reached an annual revenue run rate (ARR) of $100 million. The company’s rapid growth suggests that companies across all industries are embracing AI agents.

The startup’s growth rate surprised even its veteran co-founders, former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and longtime Google alum Clay Bavor, who wrote on their blog, “That’s a lot faster than we expected.”

Sierra’s customers include technology companies such as Deliveroo, Discord, Ramp, Rivian, SoFi and Tubi, as well as established companies outside the technology sector such as ADT, Bissell, Vans, Cigna and SiriusXM.

Taylor and Bavor said they expected tech companies would be comfortable experimenting with AI customer service agents, but they were surprised that older companies also became Sierra’s customers.

The company says it can build AI agents that can perform tasks such as authenticating patients to healthcare providers, processing returns, ordering replacement credit cards and helping customers apply for mortgages – automating the customer service work that previously required human agents.

Sierra faces competition from startups like Decagon and Intercom, but the company claims to be the leader in the AI ​​customer service category.

Sierra was last valued at $10 billion when it raised a $350 million funding round led by Greenoaks Capital in September. Other investors in the company include Sequoia, Benchmark, ICONIQ and Thrive Capital.

Based on its $100 million ARR, Sierra is currently valued at a revenue multiple of 100x, a hefty valuation despite its exceptionally fast growth.

The startup uses an outcome-based pricing model, charging customers for work completed instead of flat subscription fees.

Taylor and Bavor met in 2005 at Google, where Taylor hired Bavor as an associate product manager.

Taylor, a computer science graduate from Stanford, co-founded Google Maps before founding FriendFeed, which acquired Facebook. At Facebook, he was CTO and helped create the iconic “Like” button. He later founded Quip, a Google Docs competitor that Salesforce acquired for $750 million in 2016.

Taylor then served as co-CEO of Salesforce alongside Marc Benioff for over a year. After Taylor left Salesforce in 2023, Bavor — who had worked at Google for 18 years on leading products like Gmail and Google Drive — invited him to lunch, where they decided to launch Sierra.