OpenAI Chair's AI startup Sierra at $20M ARR in one year
7 AI Note-Taking startups raised $500M+, each have a soaring growth
The AI customer support startup Sierra has crossed $20M ARR in less than one year.
Sierra was co-founded by Bret Taylor, a prominent figure in the tech industry known for his leadership roles at Salesforce and Facebook, and Clay Bavor, a former Google executive with extensive experience in consumer-facing products.
Its mission is to transform customer service by leveraging AI-powered chatbots that provide tailored solutions for enterprises.
The platform is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing business systems, allowing it to perform tasks autonomously and efficiently.
Reuters said Sierra has raised $175 million in a new funding round led by Greenoaks Capital, which gives it a valuation of $4.5 billion, a surprising revenue multiple of 225x.
Before that, Sequoia led Sierra’s $85M Series A in January with a valuation of $1B, and Benchmark led its $20M seed funding last June with a valuation of $100M.
Both the valuation and ARR are in skyrocketing growth, but the market for customer support is big enough to bridge the valuation gap, I believe.
Just days before, Dialpad announced its ARR surpassed $300M.
Dialpad is an AI-powered customer communications platform designed to enhance business interactions through various features and tools.
It offers a unified space for teams to connect, featuring real-time coaching, AI-assisted business phone systems, and video calls with built-in transcriptions.
Crossing $300 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), cementing the company’s leadership in revolutionizing customer communications by delivering purpose-built native AI capabilities to the entire customer journey.
In the latest blog, Sierra announced AI phone calls with lifelike quality:
Chatting with AI has become mainstream and delightful, thanks in large part to ChatGPT. But for most consumer brands, chat is rarely the most important channel. People still prefer to call companies on the phone, and for good reason.
That's why today we're excited to announce a new way to interact with Sierra agents: voice.
That is the ability Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor want Sierra to have “Build once, deploy anywhere”.
Another big trend in AI is AI scribes(AI note taking), 7 AI scribes startups raised more than $500M from investors recently, and all of them have soaring growth rates like 10x or 100x. Here is a brief introduction:
1. The first is Read AI, which raised another $50M Series B led by Smash Capital, just six months after its Series A, underscoring an acceleration in growth with 100K new accounts created weekly and 81% first-month retention.
“Read AI has gone from upstart to incumbent with a 720% increase in active users in the last 12 months,” said David Shim, Co-Founder and CEO of Read AI.
2. The second is Granola, which raised a $20M Series A led by Spark Capital, with participation from investors AI Grant, Lightspeed, Betaworks, Firstminute Capital, and others.
After launching in May 2024, Granola quickly gained traction among leaders in tech:
Over half of Granola users are in leadership roles. Founders and leaders at unicorn companies like Vercel, Ramp, and Roblox now use Granola many times a week. Partners at top VC firms like Benchmark, Sequoia, Accel, and Union Square Ventures use it to take pitches.
