Programming Won’t Survive AI But Bret Taylor Thinks Sierra Will.

Bret Taylor, co-founder of Sierra and chairman of OpenAI, says the quiet part out loud. AI is coming for programmers. “The thing I self-identify with [being a computer programmer] is, like, being obviated by this technology,” he admitted on a recent podcast with The Information. For someone who built Google Maps, led Salesforce as co-CEO, and still calls himself a coder, Taylor’s warning lands with weight. And it frames a reality that the man now pitching AI agents to Fortune 500s is also predicting the extinction of his own profession.

Taylor argues that the enterprise software market moves like a pendulum between “best of breed” products and “best of platform” incumbents. Right now, he says, the pendulum is firmly on the side of startups building agents that solve specific problems more effectively than larger competitors.

Sierra, founded in 2023, sits squarely in this trend. The company builds customer service agents that handle millions of calls and chats, offering businesses measurable efficiency gains. Taylor framed Sierra’s model as “pay per outcome”: companies are only billed when an agent successfully completes a task. “If our agent solves the problem or makes the sale, we get paid. If not, it’s free,” he said. That approach, he added, directly aligns Sierra’s incentives with its customers.

“In enterprise software, there’s an old debate between best of breed and best of platform,” Taylor explained. The reason, he noted, is straightforward. The financial gains from working AI agents dwarf the licensing costs of software. “If you run a large call center and can cut 75% of calls versus 50%, the business impact is enormous compared to the licensing cost,” he said. Startups, Taylor argued, are surging not because they’re cheaper, but because their products work better.