Redefining Customer Experience Through Intelligent AI | Suveer Kothari, Sierra | RAISE 2026

Strategic Positioning & Investment

• Ray Ventures (represented by Rohit) has invested in Sierra, describing it as the leading AI platform for customer experience.
• Xavier (Xavier) leads Sierra's European operations, having joined after 17 years at Google to capitalize on the current AI transition.
• The company targets the "leading platform for customer-facing AI," focusing on agents capable of handling both inbound and outbound conversations naturally.

Business Model Innovation

• Sierra utilizes an outcomes-based pricing model where they are only paid if a customer interaction is resolved successfully.
• If a resolution fails, Sierra absorbs the cost of agentic inference, creating a structural moat where higher resolution rates equate to the best cost structure.
• This model represents a shift similar to the move from license-based software to consumption, and from impression-based advertising to cost-per-click.

Deployment Velocity & ROI

• Sierra serves 40% of the Fortune 500, deploying solutions at scale within large enterprises.
• The company targets a 90-day timeline to go live and demonstrate ROI, contrasting with traditional software transformations that take years.
• Case Study: Deployed with Singtel (Singapore telecom) to contain 70% of customer conversations via AI within 10 weeks.
• Case Study: Partnered with Rocket Mortgage to handle mortgage intake journeys, achieving outcomes four times better than human-only teams.

Operational Methodology

• Sierra employs a "forward-deployed engineering" model where product managers and engineers work on-site with customers to deeply understand business workflows.
• Agents are built collaboratively to define specific goals and guardrails, avoiding brittle, rule-based "if-then" logic in favor of flexible, natural language interactions.
• The system is designed for continuous improvement; unlike traditional software, the solution is "worst it will ever be" on day one, improving iteratively as data is gathered.

Model Strategy & Orchestration

• The platform abstracts model selection from the customer, running up to 15 different models simultaneously (including own fine-tuned models and foundation models) and routing based on specific needs like reasoning capability.
• This orchestration layer allows customers to focus on business outcomes while shielding them from the volatility of weekly foundation model updates.
• Sierra launched "Ghostwriter," a feature allowing natural language prompting for agents—a capability that emerged only recently with models like Codex and latest Claude iterations.
• The company maintains a hybrid approach to models (open vs. closed source) to remain at the "bleeding edge," though no definitive long-term trend line exists due to geopolitical factors.

Competitive Landscape & Industry View

• Xavier argues that foundation model companies will primarily function as platforms selling tokens/infrastructure, while application-layer companies like Sierra will bridge the gap between model capabilities and specific business outcomes.
• He predicts a future where agents evolve from transactional conversations to long-term, memory-enabled relationships, acting as proactive personal concierges.
• The company views the current technological shift as a transition to "conversation as the interface," moving away from traditional UI elements like clicks and dropdowns.

Forward-Looking Statements

• Xavier predicts the shift to personalized, long-running agents with memory and context will be experienced by consumers very soon.
• The company anticipates the "messiness" of enterprise AI deployment will ensure a continued role for specialized application companies rather than a total takeover by AGI or base model labs.
• Brett Taylor (Sierra founder/OpenAI board chairman) envisions a future where AI moves from simple conversations to sustained relationships with personalized memory.