Sierra Technologies, an agentic AI company cofounded two years ago by OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor, is preparing to lease roughly 300,000 square feet of office space in South Beach, a block from Oracle Park.
The deal, according to sources, is for a block of space at the historic Wharfside Building at the China Basin office complex at 185 Berry St.
Sierra has been rapidly growing since Taylor, previously co-CEO of Salesforce, teamed up with his former Google colleague Clay Bavor in 2023. If completed, the China Basin deal will be the city’s largest office lease since OpenAI’s takeover of Old Navy’s former headquarters last year.
Taylor’s company leased its first office last year, 41,000 square feet at 235 2nd St. The startup doubled its presence there in February. It is not known if it will move out of that location. A Sierra spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The pending deal was first reported by the San Francisco Business Times (opens in new tab).
Sierra, which makes AI agents that can perform tasks within company systems and respond to customer support inquiries, has customers that include Clear, ADT, and Sirius XM, according to its website.
At Salesforce, Taylor served as co-CEO alongside Marc Benioff from 2021 to 2023 and was widely viewed as a potential successor to the billionaire. Sierra is a direct competitor to Salesforce, which has been pushing its Agentforce products for two years.
Taylor previously served as Chief Technology Officer at Facebook from 2009 to 2012 before launching Quip, the collaborative document application that was acquired by Salesforce in 2016. He became chairman of the OpenAI board in 2023 after the company’s leadership was restructured during the blink-and-you’d-miss-it removal of CEO Sam Altman.
Sierra has raised more than $635 million in funding. With its latest round, an injection of $350 million, the company is valued at approximately $10 billion.
The company today also announced it is opening a new office in Singapore (opens in new tab), which will serve as its regional office for the Southeast Asian market.
The China Basin complex, which comprises two buildings totaling 885,000 square feet, is about half vacant. Lyft is headquartered at the property and signed a 10-year lease renewal (opens in new tab) last year, although it shed half of its 335,000 square feet of space.