Sierra Acquires Agent Startup ‘Takeoff’ to Diversify Its Business

In 2020, 22-year-old Aakash Thumaty was a product manager at Salesforce when he wrote an essay, “Value Driven Innovation at Shopify and the Incumbency Trap at Salesforce,” which argued against Salesforce’s subscription-based business model.

He sent it to Bret Taylor, who at the time was Salesforce’s chief operating officer.

To Thumaty’s surprise, Taylor shared it with other executives at the company.

Six years later, Thumaty and Taylor’s paths are crossing again. Sierra, the AI customer support startup Taylor now leads, is acquiring Thumaty’s three-person startup, Takeoff, which develops agents that can work on tasks for long periods of time, the companies told The Information exclusively.

They wouldn’t disclose details but it’s unlikely to have been a high priced acquisition.

Takeoff was founded a year ago and was closing in on $10 million in annualized revenue earlier this month, Thumaty said. (It had previously raised $15 million in funding from Matrix and venture capitalist Lachy Groom.)

But Sierra executives hope Thumaty’s expertise will come in handy as the company tries to move beyond AI-powered customer support agents into selling agents for other tasks.