Sierra CEO Bret Taylor on why the AI bubble feels like the dotcom boom

Decoder with Nilay Patel

This is Alex Heath. For my final episode as your Thursday episode guest host, I recently sat down with Bret Taylor, the CEO of AI startup Sierra and the chairman of OpenAI, for a live event in San Francisco hosted by Alix Partners.

Bret has worked at Google, Facebook, and Salesforce in high-level, executive roles, and he led Twitter’s board during Elon Musk’s takeover, so very few people have seen the tech industry up close like Bret has. Now, he’s all in on AI. We covered a lot of ground in this conversation, and I hope you find Bret’s perspective as fascinating as I did.

Links:

• Ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor’s Sierra is the latest $10 billion AI startup | CNBC
• I talked to Sam Altman about the GPT-5 launch fiasco | Verge
• Sam Altman says ‘yes,’ AI is in a bubble | Verge
• MIT study on AI profits rattles tech investors | Axios
• GPT-5 Pro can prove new, interesting mathematics | Sebastien Bubeck
• AI chatbots are ready to talk to customers. Sort of. | WSJ
• How is AI different than other technology waves? | Acquired Podcast

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices