Sierra’s Bret Taylor says the era of button-clicking is over

Bret Taylor, co-founder and CEO Mountain rangea startup that creates artificial intelligence customer service agents for businesses, is convinced that the way people interact with software will change in the near future.

Last month, Sierra was released Ghostwriteran agent designed to create other agents. With this “agent as a service” tool, the startup aims to replace traditional click-based web applications with natural language. Users simply describe what they need, prompting Ghostwriter to autonomously create and deploy a specialized agent to perform the task.

The idea of ​​replacing software with language-based prompts is largely interesting because many of the tools used in businesses today aren’t routinely used, says Taylor, who was a former co-CEO of Salesforce.

“You sign up for Workday when you come on board as a new employee and maybe for open enrollment,” Taylor told the audience at HumanX conference to be held this week in San Francisco. Instead of learning to navigate complex systems, he argued, users will soon use natural language to complete tasks without ever interacting with the software interface.

“I really think that’s where people are going,” Taylor said.

He added that Sierra already uses Ghostwriter to deploy agents at “unparalleled speed.” Taylor offered, for example, that his startup implemented an agent for Nordstrom in just four weeks.

Sierra announced last fall that it had reached $100 million in annualized revenue (ARR), less than 21 months after its founding. The company was last valued at $10 billion when it raised a $350 million round led by Greenoaks Capital in September.

“Most companies don’t want to make software,” Taylor said. “They want solutions to their problems.”

While a fundamental shift in software may be coming as Taylor predicts, several technologists and investors tell TechCrunch that, for now, the implementation of AI agents is far from autonomous.

Many companies that claim to offer AI agents, including Sierra and legitimate AI startup Harvey, employ “advanced” engineers who must constantly update and improve client agents to ensure they work as intended.