logo
Exclusive: Ex-Netflix communication chief joins AI startup Sierra

Exclusive: Ex-Netflix communication chief joins AI startup Sierra

Axios04-03-2025

Rachel Whetstone has joined Sierra, the AI startup founded by former Salesforce CEO and current OpenAI chair Bret Taylor and former Google executive Clay Bavor, Axios exclusively reports.
Why it matters: Whetstone previously led communications for four of the fastest growing companies of the past 40 years. She will be tasked with positioning Sierra to disrupt the customer service space.
Catch up quick: Whetstone most recently served as chief communications officer at Netflix, but exited late last year following an organizational restructuring.
Before joining Netflix in 2018, Whetstone oversaw communications for then-Facebook's WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger products. She also oversaw policy and communications at Uber and Google.
Whetstone started her career in British politics.
Details: Whetstone joined the the startup on March 3 and will oversee all communications.
Sierra, which builds custom AI agents for enterprise customer service, recently raised $175 million at a $4.5 billion valuation.
What she's saying:"I've been fascinated by AI since first hearing Larry Page talk about it at Google nearly 20 years ago," Whetstone told Axios.
"In my conversations with Bret and Clay, I've been inspired by their intensity and integrity, appreciated their sense of humor and excited about helping brands create great experiences their customers love — versus the 'oh god' feeling most of us have today when interacting with companies."
Between the lines: This is Whetstone's first time working for a startup and as a team of one.
"It's about how comms can help create a strong brand for a new company in a busy space, generate interest and excitement from potential customers and future employees, and build momentum for the business," she said.
Then it's about finding "new and interesting ways to repeat that message over and over again," she added."Repetition never spoils the prayer."
What she's watching: How companies, brands and founders are navigating the fragmented media landscape.
"There's a lot of debate about going direct vs via "traditional" media and I think you have to do both well. Otherwise, you'll miss out on opportunities to drive conversation about your brand and shape the debate," Whetstone said.
What's next: Sierra recently introduced "supervisor agents"that would oversee the primary AI agent and ensure it's providing factual information aligned with company policy, the co-founders told Ina Fried at Axios' AI+ Summit in San Francisco.
Whetstone will be tasked with explaining how more AI agents can support and safeguard against other AI agents.
More on Axios:
Sierra, co-founded by OpenAI chair Bret Taylor, raises $175 million
Exclusive: These tech executives want to support AI agents with more AI
Workplace chat's future: more AI agents, fewer humans

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Will AI Agents Upend The Software Development Life Cycle?
Will AI Agents Upend The Software Development Life Cycle?

Forbes

time18 minutes ago

  • Forbes

Will AI Agents Upend The Software Development Life Cycle?

Engaging Agent Mode on active code in GitHub May 2025 will go down in history as the month when agentic software development was truly unleashed upon the world. A significant step up from chat-based code assistants, agentic software tools have been positioned as a revolutionary change in the software development life cycle. Announcements from Microsoft (GitHub Copilot Agent Mode), Google (Jules), OpenAI (Codex) and Anthropic (Claude Agents) are all very promising. However, my conclusion is that we are not witnessing a revolution, but are simply seeing a further evolution of AI automation. And to be honest, I think that is good news. First, let's discuss what has driven this leap forward from coding assistants. A coding assistant is essentially a bot interface to a large language model, and this mechanism has been quite beneficial to many developers. As one proof point for this, at its Build conference in May, Microsoft said that the GitHub Copilot assistant has been used by 15 million developers. (Note: Microsoft is a client of my firm, Moor Insights & Strategy.) But three fundamental AI shifts have led to the creation of these new agentic development tools, which significantly expand the AI benefit to developers. At the Build conference, Agent Mode in GitHub Copilot was the cornerstone of Microsoft's vision of a new SDLC. The company's demonstrations of how much more quickly work can be completed and the seamless integration between VSCode and GitHub were quite impressive — and were always likely to get the lion's share of media coverage. But what's most impressive is the overall breadth of Microsoft's announcements and the fact that Microsoft may be the only company able to execute such a vision. Here are three non-Copilot things from Microsoft that also improve the SDLC. I applaud Microsoft for creating innovations across the whole SDLC. And I know that there are other improvements in security and software updates that I did not include. I do believe that Microsoft is likely the only company that can execute a broad vision for the SDLC since it owns some of the biggest pieces (tooling, repositories, security, collaboration) that a developer needs. That said, I'd like to offer up a couple of areas where Microsoft could look next. I walked away from Build impressed with the technology Microsoft has available and also what is in preview. A great deal of my research over the past 12 months has been around the impact and possibilities of AI agents and agentic workflows. However, I also am not sure we have seen something revolutionary in the SDLC — at least not yet. To me, revolutionary means that it changes the game and how it's played. Evolutionary is introducing new efficiencies to the existing game, which is what I see happening so far in this space. Here are a couple of examples of what I mean. So far, agent-based tools are more like the outsourcing trend — but that's not necessarily bad. AI is still very new and moving very fast. Revolutionizing everything would likely overwhelm many enterprises, so embracing new tools to do existing work may just be the first step in what could ultimately be a revolutionary movement.

Glean, gen AI enterprise search startup, raises $150 million in deal adding billions to valuation
Glean, gen AI enterprise search startup, raises $150 million in deal adding billions to valuation

CNBC

time30 minutes ago

  • CNBC

Glean, gen AI enterprise search startup, raises $150 million in deal adding billions to valuation

Generative AI enterprise search startup Glean announced on Tuesday that it raised $150 million in a Series F financing, pushing up its valuation from investors by billions of dollars in less than a year, to $7.2 billion. The company's last fundraising in September 2024 valued Glean at $4.6 billion. On Tuesday, Glean was also named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list for the second-consecutive year. Glean reported that its annual recurring revenue surpassed $100 million in its last fiscal year, ending Jan. 31, 2025 — less than three years after it was launched by a founding team that includes veterans from Google, Meta, and Dropbox. "We're building the platform that brings AI into the fabric of everyday work, connecting people to knowledge, automating tasks, and enabling smarter decisions across the enterprise," said Arvind Jain, Glean co-founder and CEO, in a release announcing the deal. In early 2025, Glean launched its agentic AI, Glean Agents, which the company says are on pace to support one billion agent actions by year-end. The company's core product is an AI-powered enterprise search platform that integrates with a wide array of workplace apps — Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, and Salesforce. Glean uses natural language understanding and machine learning to create a personalized knowledge graph for each user, improving enterprise search results and the ability to generate content, while automating individual workflows and corporate processes. While initially focused on tech industry customers, Glean has expanded to finance, retail and manufacturing. Jain told Deirdre Bosa, anchor of CNBC's "TechCheck," that the capital will allow Glean to double the size of teams in R&D and sales as it pushes further into the large enterprise market, overseas markets, and into more partnerships similar to recent ones with companies including fellow Disruptor Databricks, Snowflake and Palo Alto Networks. Jain said for many large enterprises across sectors of the economy, the gen AI boom is as much about concern as it is about excitement. "Large enterprises are more worried about this. They don't want to be left behind," he told CNBC. "The most important thing that I hear from businesses is they are trying to make sure that their workforce becomes AI-first," he added. Wellington Management led the fundraising, with existing investors Capital One Ventures, Altimeter, Citi, Coatue, DST Global, General Catalyst, ICONIQ Growth, IVP, Kleiner Parkins, Latitude Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures and Sequoia Capital, all participating in the deal. New investors included Khosla Ventures, Bicycle Capital, Geodesic and Archerman Capital. While consumer-facing gen AI is growing the fastest — OpenAI says it is adding millions of users an hour, and on Monday reported annual recurring revenue above $10 billion — Jain said the enterprise market has to be thought of in distinct terms. "You have to remember that models like ChatGPT, they don't know anything about your internal company's data," he said. "We're able to actually use that context and combine it with the power of models to solve real business problems for you." OpenAI does have its own enterprise business, which recently passed the three-million user mark. While Glean has seen exponential growth in recent years, it will continue to face challenges in a competitive market including Microsoft 365 Copilot, Amazon Q Business and ChatGPT Enterprise, along with offerings from fellow Disruptors Perplexity and Writer. Jain said in some cases its technology is not in competition with, but complementing the large language models being developed for the enterprise, such as fellow Disruptor Anthropic's Claude. But the competition is intensifying from all sides and overlapping. "Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, they all want to actually come into this space that we started," Jain said. "We have a lead. We have deep enterprise technology that we built over these years. ... We have to keep innovating. And the good thing for Glean is that we're not building a product that's going to get commoditized," he said. Currently based in Palo Alto, the company will soon be opening a new office in San Francisco to support its growth.

Startline survey reveals Chinese car brands gain traction among UK motorists
Startline survey reveals Chinese car brands gain traction among UK motorists

Yahoo

time31 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Startline survey reveals Chinese car brands gain traction among UK motorists

More than seven out of ten UK motorists are open to purchasing vehicles from emerging Chinese car manufacturers, according to Startline's June Used Car Tracker. In the survey, 72% of respondents expressed willingness to consider Chinese cars. BYD emerged as the most recognised brand among potential buyers, with 28% awareness, followed by Maxus at 19% and Chery at 14%. Other brands such as Aiways, Denza, and Jaecoo each garnered 11% while Omoda and Xpeng stood at 10%. Nio, Skywell, and GWM Ora achieved 9%, with Leapmotor, Lynk & Co, HiPhi, and Zeekr trailing. Startline Motor Finance CEO Paul Burgess said: 'Chinese manufacturers are making a concerted assault on the UK market – almost 12,000 BYDs were sold here in the first four months of the year – and our research shows that consumers are receptive to the idea of buying a car from them.' Burgess further explained that differentiation is a challenge for these new entrants. Those investing in marketing and dealer networks are seeing increased consumer awareness, with BYD as a prime example. Despite this, 18% of respondents prefer established brands, 11% have quality concerns, and 7% wish to support British manufacturers. Additional concerns include parts availability and security, each noted by 4% of respondents, and dealer support, mentioned by 2%. Burgess stated that while a small group of car buyers exhibits some hesitation, significant concerns typically associated with the quality and support offered by new Chinese automakers are notably minimal. Compiled by APD Global Research, the Startline Used Car Tracker surveyed 301 consumers and 66 dealers, providing insights into consumer perceptions and market trends. Earlier this year, Startline Motor Finance secured a five-year credit facility worth £475m ($583m) from the US bank JP Morgan. Startline offers near-prime financing solutions to approximately half of the UK's top 50 franchised car dealers and 70% of the leading 50 independent automotive retailers, based on revenue. "Startline survey reveals Chinese car brands gain traction among UK motorists" was originally created and published by Motor Finance Online, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store