Clay Bavor is the Co-Founder of Sierra, one of the world’s fastest-growing enterprise AI companies. Sierra is valued at approximately $15.8 billion, has raised more than $1.5BN from leading investors including Sequoia, Benchmark, Greenoaks, GV and Tiger Global, and today serves more than 40% of the Fortune 50. The company recently surpassed $150 ARR, making it one of the fastest-growing enterprise software businesses in history.
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:37 Why Clay finally said yes to building Sierra with Bret
5:53 Why Sierra chose not to train their own foundation models
7:15 The case for unbounded demand for frontier intelligence
10:41 Why token costs are rising, not falling
14:35 Open models: the US vs China gap
18:36 Inside Pinecone, Sierra’s internal AI agent
26:00 Staying close to customers as an enterprise AI company
33:22 Forward deployed teams: kickoff to live in 6 weeks
43:02 Sierra’s core values: craftsmanship, intensity, family
55:41 Advice for young people entering the AI job market
1:02:35 Quickfire: Sundar, books, and parenting lessons
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