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

Bret Taylor, co-founder and CEO of Sierra, a startup that builds customer service AI agents for enterprises, is convinced that the way humans interact with software will change in the near future.

Last month, Sierra launched Ghostwriter, an agent designed to build other agents. With this “agent as a service” tool, the startup intends 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 execute the task.

The idea of replacing software with language-driven prompts is intriguing in large part because many of the tools currently used in enterprises are not used regularly, contends Taylor, who was formerly co-CEO of Salesforce.

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

“I truly think that’s where the world is going,” Taylor said.

He adding that Sierra is already leveraging Ghostwriter to deploy agents at “unparalleled speeds.” Taylor offered, as an example, that his startup implemented an agent for Nordstrom in just four weeks.

Sierra announced last fall that it reached $100 million in annual revenue run rate (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, AI agent implementation is far from autonomous.

Many companies claiming to offer AI agents, including Sierra and legal AI startup Harvey, employ “forward-deployed” engineers who must constantly update and fine-tune customer agents to ensure they work as intended.