Bret Taylor’s Agentforce Competitor Sierra Hits 100M In Revenue
Sierra, the enterprise agent startup founded by former Salesforce Co-CEO Bret Taylor, has officially surpassed $100M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just seven quarters, marking one of the fastest ARR ramp-ups in recent enterprise software history. With many companies still piloting prototypes, Sierra’s huge milestone highlights how AI agents are taking substantial strides towards full-scale adoption and deployment.
This comes at a time when Salesforce is going through its own major AI shift, with huge bets being made on Agentforce being the next evolution of enterprise automation. With Sierra surging ahead, the competitive landscape around AI agents has sharpened dramatically – can Agentforce compete?
Bret Taylor’s Post-Salesforce Play
Taylor’s career is tightly intertwined with Salesforce’s modern trajectory. As President, COO, and later Co-CEO alongside founder Marc Benioff, he helped develop the strategies behind Slack’s integration vision, the early “AI + Data + CRM” messaging, and the groundwork for Salesforce’s generative AI roadmap.
When Taylor left Salesforce at the end of 2022, there was a lot of speculation about what his next move would be, as well as the real details around his departure. Rumors of tension between Taylor and Benioff made the news, though neither party confirmed anything publicly.
Less than a year later, Taylor re-emerged with Sierra, co-founded with former Google executive Clay Bavor. The company started with a simple but specific belief – businesses don’t want chatbots that answer questions, but instead digital workers that can complete real tasks, handle complex processes, and produce outcomes.
Sierra ultimately positioned itself around what it sees as a gap in the market with a powerful, enterprise-ready AI agent that can operate across a business.
The company’s early customer list includes the likes of Deliveroo, Ramp, Rivian, Sonos, Wayfair, Rocket Mortgage, and even century-old brands like ADT, Bissell, and Cigna. They’ve also noted that their agents are able to:
- Authenticate patients
- Manage returns
- Credit card replacement orders
- Find tax documents
- Originate mortgages – Rocket Mortgage users convert 4x faster when supported by Sierra’s agents.
Other key differentiators include:
- Omnichannel support across phone, chat, WhatsApp, email, IVR, and more.
- Outcome-based pricing, where companies pay for completed jobs.
- Enterprise-grade workflows, built for regulated industries.
- The Agent Data Platform, designed to give agents memory and context so they can shift from support into sales and retention.
All these factors show how Sierra’s agents are making a real-life impact – a huge driver in the ARR they’ve now reached.
What Does This Mean for Salesforce and Agentforce?
Agentforce is Salesforce’s big answer to the rise of AI agents, with the tool designed to let companies build their own AI agents directly inside Salesforce, using their CRM data, workflows, and security controls. But Sierra’s rapid growth and big numbers put Salesforce under a bit of pressure.
Firstly, Sierra hitting $100M ARR so quickly shows that companies do want AI agents, and they want them now. Salesforce’s biggest issue since the release of Agentforce in 2024 has been adoption rates and, subsequently, deployment rates. While Agentforce deployment is steadily rising, more evidence of successful customer adoption is needed.
Furthermore, Sierra isn’t tied to any single ecosystem. It can plug into a wide range of systems, which makes it attractive to enterprises with complex or mixed tech stacks.
Salesforce has designed Agentforce to work best inside its own platform. That’s a strength for existing Salesforce customers, but it also creates a perception gap, especially for organizations looking for agents that can operate across everything they use, not just their CRM.
Moreover, Sierra raises the bar in terms of transparency. The company openly shares its ARR, which gives the market a clear sense of its momentum. Salesforce reports Agentforce revenue inside its broader Data + AI category, so there’s less visibility into its specific traction.
As Sierra becomes a widely referenced benchmark, questions about how Agentforce compares will only grow. And adding to that dynamic is the fact that Sierra is led by Taylor – the person who helped shape much of Salesforce’s modern strategy. His presence alone heightens the competitive stakes.
Final Thoughts
In many ways, Sierra’s milestone is less about Sierra itself and more about the agent space as a whole. It confirms that AI agents are moving into the core of business processes, even amidst talks of an AI bubble.
For Salesforce, this can be viewed as both validating and challenging. Agentforce has the scale and ecosystem depth to perform, but Sierra’s momentum proves that the “agent race” is on, with plenty of potential future customers up for grabs.
