Bret Taylor

Bret Taylor (born 1980) has one of the most decorated résumés in tech: he co-created Google Maps, founded FriendFeed, served as Facebook’s CTO (where he co-invented the Like button), founded Quip, chaired Twitter’s board through the Musk acquisition, and rose to co-CEO of Salesforce. In November 2023 he was named chairman of OpenAI’s reconstituted board after the crisis that briefly ousted Sam Altman.

Betting his next act on agents

Rather than settle into board work, Taylor co-founded Sierra with longtime Google executive Clay Bavor in 2023. Sierra builds AI customer-service agents for brands like ADT and SiriusXM, and by late 2025 Forbes reported the startup was valued at $10 billion. Taylor argues the industry is past the demo phase: “I think we’re in this era now where these AI solutions are actually better than the alternative,” he said at a 2025 conference, adding that it wouldn’t surprise him if, in five or ten years, a brand’s AI agent is “their main digital experience.”

Taylor’s optimism is notably unhedged for someone who also chairs the board of the world’s most scrutinized AI lab — though he pairs it with calls for candor about disruption, telling audiences that technology makers “have a responsibility to have that conversation and not just simply deliver the technology.” Critics note the obvious: the man selling AI agents also referees the company making the models they run on, a concentration of roles that would have raised eyebrows in any earlier era of tech.