Sierra’s Bret Taylor says the era of clicking buttons is over

Bret Taylor, co-founder and CEO of Sierraa startup building AI customer service agents for businesses is convinced that the way people interact with software will change in the near future.

Sierra was launched last month Ghostwriteran agent designed to build other agents. With this ‘agent as a service’ tool, the startup aims to replace traditional click-based web applications with natural language. Users simply describe what they need, allowing Ghostwriter to autonomously create and deploy a specialized agent to perform the task.

The idea of ​​replacing software with language-driven prompts is intriguing in large part because many of the tools currently in use in businesses aren’t used regularly, says Taylor, who was previously co-CEO of Salesforce.

“You log into Workday when you onboard as a new employee, and perhaps for open enrollment,” Taylor told the audience HumanX conference taking place this week in San Francisco. Instead of learning to navigate complex systems, he argued that users will soon use natural language to perform tasks without ever interacting with the software interface.

“I really think this is where the world is going,” Taylor said.

He adds that Sierra is already using Ghostwriter to deploy agents at “unparalleled speeds.” Taylor gave the example that his startup deployed an agent for Nordstrom in just four weeks.

Sierra announced last fall that it reached $100 million in annual revenue (ARR) less than 21 months after its founding. The company was last valued at $10 billion when it raised a $350 million funding round led by Greenoaks Capital in September.

“Most companies don’t want to make software,” Taylor said. “They want solutions to their problems.”

While there may be a fundamental change in software as Taylor predicts, several technologists and investors tell TechCrunch that the implementation of AI agents is far from autonomous for now.

Many companies that claim to offer AI agents, including Sierra and legal AI startup Harvey, employ “forward deployable” engineers who must constantly update and tune customer agents to ensure they work as intended.