Inside the Rise of AI Agents | Sierra Co-founder Clay Bavor

Most people spend over 30 hours a year dealing with customer service—on hold, repeating account numbers, and navigating endless phone trees. But what if AI could fix that without losing the human touch?

Clay Bavor, co-founder of Sierra (now valued at $10B) and former VP at Google, joins us to explore how AI agents are reshaping how companies interact with customers and what that means for the most complex service industry in the world: healthcare.

We cover:

🧠 The difference between horizontal and. vertical AI solutions

⚙️ If systems of action will take over systems of record (like Epic) in enterprise AI

🫀 How empathy, tone, and even “voice sommeliers” help AI sound more human

📉 The risks of AI job displacement (and the new roles emerging in its wake)

🚀 Clay’s take on staying grounded as a unicorn entrepreneur when hype runs high in Silicon Valley

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About our guest: 

Clay Bavor is a co-founder of Sierra, which helps businesses build better, more human customer experiences with AI. A visionary product leader and technologist, Clay spent 18 years at Google, where he spearheaded some of the company’s most innovative efforts. As head of Google Labs, he led teams working on forward-looking projects, including augmented and virtual reality, Project Starline, and Google Lens. Earlier, Clay oversaw the product and design teams for Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, and Google Apps for Enterprise (now Workspace), shaping tools used by billions worldwide. He also contributed to foundational Google products, including Search and advertising technologies.

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