Agents and consumer AI

• Bret Taylor: "former Salesforce executive"; chairs OpenAI (Analytics India Magazine, Dec 24, 2025)
• Clay Bavor: ex-Google leader who managed Gmail and Google Drive (Analytics India Magazine, Dec 24, 2025)

• not named: $175 million (total $285 million), valued at $4.5 billion. Investors named: Greenoaks Capital Partners (lead), Thrive Capital, Iconiq Capital (Analytics India Magazine, Dec 24, 2025)

• Sierra says it achieved AIUC-1 certification after an independent audit by Schellman and testing by AIUC (company-reported; we did not fetch the certifier's own page) (Sierra (company-reported), Sep 17, 2026)

Sierra sells AI customer-service agents to businesses; it is here as an agents company, not a consumer app. Its "over $150M in ARR" (2026-02-06, https://sierra.ai/blog/year-two-in-review) is company-reported. Its 2026 funding could not be verified from a trusted source. The AIM page's metadata is inconsistent (published 2025-12-24, modified 2024-10-29), and the round it describes appears to be from 2024.

• Jesse Zhang: CEO (Bloomberg, Jan 28, 2026)
• Ashwin Sreenivas: co-founder (Bloomberg, Jan 28, 2026)

• Jan 27, 2026, Series D: $250 million, valued at $4.5 billion. Investors named: Coatue Management (co-lead), Index Ventures (co-lead), Chemistry VC, Definition Capital, Starwood Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures (Bloomberg, Jan 28, 2026)
• Mar 4, 2026, employee tender (secondary share sale, not new capital): not stated, valued at $4.5 billion (Decagon (company-reported), Mar 4, 2026)

• Decagon says Gartner named it a Cool Vendor in a 2026 CRM report (company-reported; Gartner's report not fetched) (Decagon (company-reported), Oct 7, 2026)

Bloomberg says Decagon added more than 100 corporate clients in the prior year, including Avis Budget Group and Deutsche Telekom; revenue not disclosed. The Bloomberg article itself shows no calendar date; the date is from its URL. Decagon sells customer-service agents to businesses.

• Eric Jing: CEO; former Microsoft Bing executive (Crowdfund Insider, Nov 23, 2025)

• Feb 2025, Series A: $100 million, valued at about $530 million (per Reuters, as cited) (Crowdfund Insider, Nov 23, 2025)
• Nov 23, 2025, Series B: $275 million, valued at $1.25 billion post-money. Investors named: Emergence Capital Partners (lead), SBI Investment, LG Technology Ventures, Pavilion Capital, UpHonest Capital (Crowdfund Insider, Nov 23, 2025)

The latest news we could verify is from November 2025; we could not check for 2026 rounds because the search budget ran out. Crowdfund Insider is not on our trusted list, and its Series B figures come from Genspark's own statements. Founding year and HQ are unverified.

• Noam Shazeer: previously led a Google research team that built LaMDA (with De Freitas) (TechCrunch, May 31, 2023)
• Daniel De Freitas: previously led a Google research team that built LaMDA (with Shazeer) (TechCrunch, May 31, 2023)

• 2023, Series A: $150 million, valued at $1 billion. Investors named: Andreessen Horowitz (lead) (TechCrunch, May 31, 2023)

This is an older funding story (2023) that now ends in a Chapter 11 sale process. We did not fetch the court docket. The 2024 Google licensing and hiring deal, the lawsuits over harm to minors, and the under-18 chat ban are widely reported, but the outlets that carried them (The Verge, NYT, Ars Technica) were blocked to our fetcher, so we could not verify them here.

• Xiao Hong: CEO (TechCrunch, Apr 27, 2026)
• Yichao Ji: chief scientist (TechCrunch, Apr 27, 2026)
• Tao Zhang: co-founder (TechCrunch, Apr 27, 2026)

Meta announced the acquisition on 2025-12-29 (reported at about $2 billion to $3 billion). TechCrunch reports the NDRC said it would "prohibit foreign investment in the Manus project" and that Xiao Hong and Yichao Ji are reportedly under exit bans. The company's post does not explain who owns Manus now. Manus reported "$100M in ARR, eight months after launch" (company-reported, 2025-12-17, https://manus.im/blog/manus-100m-arr). TechCrunch confirms Benchmark invested, but we could not verify any round's amount or valuation.

• Brendan Iribe: listed among those who lead Sesame (page does not say founder or give backgrounds) (Sesame team page (company-reported))

Sesame's team page says it is "backed by a16z, Sequoia, Spark, Matrix, and a collection of founders and investors", but we could not verify any round amount, valuation or founding year from a fetched source. Included as an AI-device and voice-companion company; its eyewear is not yet shipping.