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What Clay Bavor thinks about AI agents

@clay-bavor · 10 positions · 0 changes of mind

Co-founder of the AI agent company Sierra, and previously an eighteen-year Google executive who ran product for Workspace, virtual and augmented reality, and Google Labs.

Clay Bavor did not write this page.

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6 dated positions, 2025, in their own words. Our reading of what Clay Bavor has said — not written or endorsed by them.

  1. Our readingMost conversations with a company's agent will eventually be with the customer's own personal agent -- agents talking to agents.

    Their wordsBrett and I like betting and one of the bets we have is the year in which greater than 50% of conversations with agents built on Sierra are with people's personal agents. So agents talking to agents.

    ↗How is AI Different Than Other Technology Waves? (With Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor) [ACQ2]youtube.com 3rd of 22 in this recording

  3. Our readingAI agents can already resolve more than eighty per cent of a company's incoming customer issues.

    Their wordsOne of the first was we had a bet as to what percent of kind of all incoming customer issues one of our agents could resolve. And Brett was maybe the pessimist and realist favorably charitably. And I bet we'd exceed 80% by the end of the year and we did.

    ↗How is AI Different Than Other Technology Waves? (With Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor) [ACQ2]youtube.com 4th of 22 in this recording

  5. Our readingNeither seats nor tokens can price an agent, because neither of them measures whether the job got done.

    Their wordsSeat based. Well, what is a seat? That doesn't make any sense. Consumption where it's like is it per message? Is it per token? Is it per conversation? And none of these things actually mapped very well to getting a job done and getting a job done well.

    ↗How is AI Different Than Other Technology Waves? (With Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor) [ACQ2]youtube.com 15th of 22 in this recording

  7. Our readingGreat customer service has always been a luxury only a Hermès or a Four Seasons could afford, and AI is what breaks the trade-off between its cost and its quality.

    Their wordsAnd the reason this is important is what we're trying to do in a way is resolve this age-old tension between the cost and quality of customer experience where I think every great business wants to deliver an amazing experience to their customers. But unless you're like Hermes or the Four Seasons, it's too expensive to do.

    ↗How is AI Different Than Other Technology Waves? (With Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor) [ACQ2]youtube.com 16th of 22 in this recording

  9. Our readingAn application-layer AI company's real breakthroughs come from going a click or two down the stack rather than from using the models as they are.

    Their wordsmany of the breakthroughs that we've had that have enabled us to to deliver such quality and cost savings and more have come through novel agent architectures and and really going down a click or two in in the stack to innovate at at lower levels of the technology stack.

    ↗How is AI Different Than Other Technology Waves? (With Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor) [ACQ2]youtube.com 19th of 22 in this recording

  11. Our readingSoftware at the AI frontier iterates in days where a hardware display takes years: a breakthrough on Monday can be in customers' hands on Wednesday.

    Their wordsWe can have a breakthrough in our agent architecture on Monday implemented on Tuesday and have it deployed with hundreds of our customers on Wednesday and directly see the impact of of that work.

    ↗How is AI Different Than Other Technology Waves? (With Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor) [ACQ2]youtube.com 21st of 22 in this recording