Salesforce Co-CEO's AI startup Nabs $85M valued at $1B
Plus Smartsheet surpassed $1B ARR
Hey, my friends, AI is still absorbing money from VCs. Today’s trending signal is Sierra, a startup co-founded by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, just nabs another $85M from Sequoia Capital near $1B valuation, sourced Bloomberg.
What does Sierra do?
Sierra seems to be still in stealth, what we only know is it is an AI company that aims to apply AI to some of the most important business problems. Bloomberg says it already has significant traction.
Just six months ago, Benchmark led Sierra’s first round of funding at a valuation of over $100M. Sierra raised about $20M in the round including money from Sequoia.
Who is Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor?
Bret Taylor:
Now OpenAI Chairman.
Founded Quip — which Salesforce acquired for $750M in 2016. Then he became COO, and Co-CEO of Salesforce, once seen as a likely successor to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
Cofounded FriendFeed, acquired by Facebook fro $50M then became CTO of Facebook.
Created Google Maps.
Was chairman of Twitter board, and is known for his involvement in OpenAI and his role in Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter.
Clay Bavor:
Worked at Google for a long time. He joined in 2005.
Over the years, he managed projects like Gmail and Google Drive.
He is considered a close assistant to Google's CEO Sundar Pichai.
In 2015, Google chose Clay to run their virtual reality (VR) unit.
Clay's job was to make Google's virtual reality efforts outpace competitors
Why Sierra? A LinkedIn post from Bret Taylor last year said:
Rarely do you encounter a new technology so powerful that it feels inevitable that it will change the course of every industry. I remember feeling that way when I first used a web browser in high school, and then again when I first saw Steve Jobs demonstrate the iPhone in 2007.
I have that same sense of excitement and inevitability about modern AI, especially given recent advances in large language models.
I could not be more excited to announce that Clay Bavor and I are going to create a new company to apply AI to solve some of the most important problems in business.
Smartsheet surpassed $1B ARR
Smartsheet started as a Pacific Northwest startup with a vision to empower millions to work better, and has now become a global company with a focus on enabling large enterprises to operate at their peak.
It has become the first company in the Enterprise Work Management category to surpass $1 billion in ARR.
The company is trusted by over 85% of the 2023 Fortune 500, but only an estimated 10% of organizations worldwide currently use a work management platform.