Bret Taylor (Sierra, OpenAI): Why the future of enterprise software belongs to vertical agents

Sierra founder and OpenAI board chairman Bret Taylor joins Pigment co-CEO Eléonore Crespo to discuss how AI agents are reshaping enterprise software and customer experience. Bret brings a rare perspective on technology waves. He founded Google Maps, served as CTO of Facebook, and was co-CEO of Salesforce before launching Sierra, an agentic AI platform for customer service. In this conversation, he shares what it means to build in the middle of a defining shift, why vertical AI agents will unlock entirely new software categories, and how to design trust into systems that are powerful but imperfect. Key topics: Why the wave is always bigger than any one company Turning customer love into a repeatable system, not one-off heroics How AI agents will become the atomic unit of enterprise software Designing for trust when models are non-deterministic Why vertical specialists with deep domain expertise will win out The future of user interfaces in a world of personal agents How leaders can keep learning as AI moves increasingly faster Read the key takeaways here: https://www.pigment.com/perspectives-... Guest: Bret Taylor, Founder & CEO of Sierra, Board Chairman of OpenAI Host: Eléonore Crespo, Co-CEO of Pigment Production: Marcos Rocha and Pigment Series: Perspectives by Pigment Chapters: 00:00 Introduction: Bret Taylor’s career in tech (Facebook, Salesforce, Sierra) 00:23 Lessons from two decades of tech shifts and innovation 01:49 Scaling customer centricity: Building a machine for happy customers 03:35 Reshaping customer experience (CX) with AI agents 09:55 Designing for trust, accountability, and safety in AI agents 13:33 The next leap for AI agents: tooling and design patterns 17:31 The atomic unit of AI as the agent 21:19 Underexplored AI architectures and bringing humans into the loop 23:38 Mental health, AI alignment, and parenting in the age of AI 28:23 How leaders can keep learning amidst constant AI breakthroughs