Brett Taylor is the CEO of AI startup Sierra and chairman of OpenAI. Nathan Lane/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Brett Taylor may be Silicon Valley’s most in-demand technologist these days.
The 43-year-old co-inventor of Google Maps and former co-CEO of Salesforce was chairman of Twitter’s board during Elon Musk’s chaotic 2022 acquisition and was involved in controversial negotiations with Musk. became a central figure.
In November, when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was abruptly fired and rehired over a frenzied weekend, Taylor was the chairman of an agreement struck to resolve the situation. Recruited to join OpenAI’s board of directors.
On Wednesday, Taylor launched Sierra, a startup he co-founded with former Google executive Clay Baber, focused on building AI chatbots for businesses.as luck According to reports, Sierra has already raised $110 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Benchmark.
Does Taylor’s role on OpenAI’s board matter now that he is CEO of another AI company, Sierra? After all, venture capitalist Reid Hoffman He gave up his seat on OpenAI’s board last year to avoid any perceived conflict of interest with the AI startup.
Taylor doesn’t see any inherent conflict between his role at OpenAI and his role at Sierra. “My job at OpenAI is really more about governance than day-to-day operations,” Taylor said. luck He spoke in an interview prior to the release of Sierra. He emphasized that he does not see Sierra as a direct competitor to OpenAI’s efforts. “We are customers of OpenAI in addition to many other customers,” Taylor said.
“We’re at a little bit of a higher altitude. We’re not building artificial general intelligence, right? We’re building products for enterprises,” Taylor said of Sierra’s customers. He contrasted service-oriented chatbots with AGI, a still theoretical type of AI that proponents hope will be able to perform most tasks as well or better than humans.
Still, Taylor said he can remove himself from the decision-making process “any time there is a potential for duplication.”
Taylor cited the importance of OpenAI’s goal of creating AGI in explaining his decision to join OpenAI’s board when he was already deep in the process of launching his startup.
“I took on the role because I care deeply about OpenAI’s mission, and like many people around the world, I spent that weekend wondering if the mission was in jeopardy. “I was pretty anxious,” Taylor said of the tremor. – Temporarily expelled Altman from the company at OpenAI.
“The opportunity for artificial general intelligence to benefit all humanity is one of the most important missions of our time, and I consider it one of the privileges of my career to be able to participate in that mission.” he stated.
Read the full story here — Exclusive: Former Salesforce co-CEO Brett Taylor and longtime Googler Clay Baber raise $110 million to bring AI “agents” to businesses
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