OpenAI board member Bret Taylor has a new AI startup

Equity

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4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to our Wednesday show, in which we talk through the week’s leading startup and venture capital news. Today we have an absolute pile of material, so let’s get to work: Bret Taylor’s new startup is turning heads: Known for his work at Facebook, Salesforce and OpenAI, Taylor’s new startup Sierra is building conversational AI agents. It has raised a mountain of capital to date, which it might need given that it’s not alone in its niche. FlowFi’s counter-cultural decision: FlowFi is building software to help startups keep their books more intelligently. But it’s not going to try and replace human inputs into financial work. Instead, it’s pairing its software with a labor marketplace so that startups can blend human and computer intelligence. If this means more GAAP accounting for startups, we’re here for it. Bold and Antithesis snag new capital: Bold raised $50 million for its Latin American fintech business, in good news for the sector and region that once went together like peanut butter and honey. Meanwhile Antithesis raised $47 million for its software testing service. Homebrew up, Foundry out: Homebrew is putting together an interesting new $50 million fund, while Foundry has announced that after its current, $500 million fund, it’s out of the game.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity at the Tech Ranch Podcast where we unpack their numbers and the
0:16.2	nuance behind the headlines.
0:18.3	Today is February 14th, 2024, Happy Valentine's Day.
0:22.7	I hope you're going to eat some chocolate and chill on the couch because you deserve it.
0:26.4	But this is Alex and this is our Wednesday show, where we dig into the critical startup and
0:30.6	venture capital stories from the week thus far.
0:33.0	On the pond today, an absolute killer list of stuff,
0:36.0	I can't wait to talk about this.
0:38.0	We're going to start with Brett Taylor's new startup Sierra,
0:41.0	why FlowFi wants to combine people and tech.
0:44.0	Then we have Venture Capital Rounds from Bold and Antithesis,
0:47.6	and we'll close our startup coverage
0:49.0	by asking why everyone wants me to eat more mushrooms. Then in the venture corner we have news from
0:54.9	Homebrew, Foundry, and the latest from Europe. Let's go.
1:01.0	So to kick off our startup coverage today I want to talk about someone who may be best known for his work in big tech. That's Brett Taylor.
1:08.0	He's the former Google Maps dude. He founded Friendfeed and then became Facebook's
1:13.1	CTO. Then he founded Crip and then became Salesforce's co- CEO.
1:17.6	And he's a former board member over at Twitter and currently sits on the board of
1:21.9	Open AI. And he's building a new company. and currently sits on the board of open AI
1:22.8	and he's building a new company called Sierra.
1:26.0	So what is Sierra up to?
1:28.0	Well, it's building conversational AI agents.
	...

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