A fresh investment is supposedly putting the enterprise-focused AI startup Sierra, co-founded by OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor and former Google executive Clay Bavor, on the cusp of becoming a unicorn.
According to an unnamed source cited by Bloomberg on Friday (Jan. 26), Sequoia Capital is reportedly in the lead in a $85 million funding round that would value Sierra at about $1 billion.
The paper states that the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has contributed to the AI industry’s global attraction of investors and the influx of funds into the sector.
As a result, the research claims, there has been a surge in internet-based artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives and projects, thanks to the giddy enthusiasm of investors in both China and the US.
According to the report, Taylor and Bavor, who co-founded Sierra, want to use AI to solve important problems facing businesses. Sierra is already making a big splash in the market, even though it just came out of stealth mode.
After OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman was fired and rehired, Taylor reportedly became a board member, as stated in the report. Prior to his November departure from Salesforce and return to his entrepreneurial background, he was the co-CEO of the firm. Elon Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter was also heavily influenced by him.
Bavor reportedly started working for Google in 2005 and rose through the ranks to handle Gmail and Google Drive before taking the helm of the VR division in 2015. According to his LinkedIn profile, he co-founded the new company in March after leaving Google that same month.
French AI startup Mistral AI was valued at over $2 billion and raised $415 million in December during another round of fundraising for AI companies. Among the many European AI startups, Mistral AI stands out for its open-source chatbot and generative AI software. Its founders were researchers at Google and Meta.
Coincident with the publication of Sierra’s efforts, the Financial Times (FT) reported that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) business, xAI, is negotiating with investors across the globe with the goal of raising $6 billion in capital, with a projected valuation of $20 billion. Musk established xAI in June, and in November, the company unveiled Grok, its chatbot.
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