Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation • Hacker News Board

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#11

Post by captn3m0 » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:21 PM UTC

If you (like me) are hearing about this for the first time, Bret Taylor is the co-founder.

> Bret is Co-Founder of Sierra. Most recently, he served as Co-CEO of Salesforce. Prior to Salesforce, Bret founded Quip and was CTO of Facebook. He started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps. Bret serves on the board of OpenAI.

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#12

Post by linkregister » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

I think this is generally a good product because businesses that previously had zero phone support can now afford to have something. However, the hard work of actually building out the various workflows and decision trees is not automatic. Previously, a call center employee would receive abuse from a caller for being unempowered to make a decision. Instead, an LLM will perform the same role.

Ideally, businesses will escalate to an empowered human for all undefined parts of the flowchart. In practice, I truly hope it will be better than the current pre-recorded phone tree system that leads to a human following a script.

I personally only call support because a fix is not available through an organization's website.

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#13

Post by tombert » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

reconnecting wrote: post #10

tombert wrote: post #2

Damn, for just a moment I thought the Sierra Online company was coming back. I want a new official Quest for Glory game.

Assume Sierra owners are too young to know what Sierra games means. I was absolutely obsessed with their logo (1) at school time. 1. https://preview.redd.it/remember-sierra-games-1979-2008-they... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMQi7olp-tw

What was wrong with their logo? Or did you mean to type "obsessed"?

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#14

Post by MagicMoonlight » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #12

I think this is generally a good product because businesses that previously had zero phone support can now afford to have something. However, the hard work of actually building out the various workflows and decision trees is not automatic. Previously, a call center employee would receive abuse from a caller for being unempowered to make a decision. Instead, an LLM will perform the same role. Ideally, businesses will…

AWS can do this out of the box

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#15

Post by tombert » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

htx80nerd wrote: post #7

pmdr wrote: post #4

So we're supposed to believe that removing humans from customer support will lead to better outcomes? > Ensure you only pay for the value Sierra delivers with outcome-based pricing. Yeah... that won't last.

AI customer support is trash and everyone hates it , but it makes the Wall St numbers go up, so it's a good thing.

I broadly agree though I have noticed that it seems to be getting a bit better. I hate how patronizing pretty much every LLM tends to be, but at least I've noticed now that the AI support is better at figuring out what it is I actually want.

That said, my life hack for these things to get escalated to a human is to just keep saying or typing curse words. Usually that triggers a "connect to human" flow. I can't promise it will always work, but I can say it has worked every time I have tried it.

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#16

Post by jcgrillo » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #2

Damn, for just a moment I thought the Sierra Online company was coming back. I want a new official Quest for Glory game.

A new Lode Runner when

EDIT: holy shit I stand corrected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lode_Runner

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#17

Post by throw0101c » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #2

Damn, for just a moment I thought the Sierra Online company was coming back. I want a new official Quest for Glory game.

At least I'm not the only one:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Entertainment

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#18

Post by thatmf » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #2

Damn, for just a moment I thought the Sierra Online company was coming back. I want a new official Quest for Glory game.

Same. A new Gabriel Knight would be fun!

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#19

Post by reconnecting » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #13

reconnecting wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume Sierra owners are too young to know what Sierra games means. I was absolutely obsessed with their logo (1) at school time. 1. https://preview.redd.it/remember-sierra-games-1979-2008-they... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMQi7olp-tw

What was wrong with their logo? Or did you mean to type "obsessed"?

Obsessed, correct.

One of the most beautiful game logos, going back to the early nineties.

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#20

Post by zamadatix » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:31 PM UTC

htx80nerd wrote: post #7

pmdr wrote: post #4

So we're supposed to believe that removing humans from customer support will lead to better outcomes? > Ensure you only pay for the value Sierra delivers with outcome-based pricing. Yeah... that won't last.

AI customer support is trash and everyone hates it , but it makes the Wall St numbers go up, so it's a good thing.

AI support generally sucks but I actually wouldn't mind if everyone used it for the initial call routing portion. Beats an IVR tree or waiting for someone to just redirect your call to the real queue.