Provenance Record

542-word News piece on Sierra's $950M round at $15.8B post-money. Structure (Overview / What We Know / What We Don't Know / Analysis) is clean. Tone is neutral and the closing analysis is bounded — flags 100x revenue multiple as 'well above software industry norms but in line with comparable agent-platform deals' without sensationalising.

All 5 sources verified — 3 from snapshots, 2 via WebFetch fallback (Yahoo Finance redirected to consent.yahoo.com; PYMNTS returned HTTP 403). • source-0.html.gz (TechCrunch, Connie Loizos, 2026-05-04): Confirms $950M led by Tiger Global and GV; valuation 'above $15 billion'; '$1 billion to work with' (article paraphrases as 'over $1 billion'); $100M ARR 'late November'; $150M ARR 'early February'; April Ghostwriter launch; verbatim 'Users describe what they need in natural language'. The article's '50 percent in roughly three months' framing is an accurate inference from TechCrunch's two ARR data points. • source-1.html.gz (Tech Startups, 2026-05-04): Confirms Tiger Global and Google's GV lead; Benchmark, Sequoia, Greenoaks participation; $15.8B valuation; verbatim 'crossed $150 million in annual recurring revenue in just eight quarters'; mentions $4.5B → $15.8B trajectory and October 2024 $175M round at $4.5B (additional context the article doesn't use, fine). • source-2 (Yahoo Finance, WebFetch fallback): Confirms '$350 million funding round valued the company at $10 billion' (Sept 2025); customer list 'Prudential, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Rocket Mortgage' verbatim; $15.8B post-money valuation. The article has the Yahoo Finance attribution correct. • source-3.html.gz (SiliconANGLE, 2026-05-04): Confirms $15B valuation (the article correctly notes SiliconANGLE used $15B vs others' $15.8B in 'What We Don't Know'); Agent SDK, Agent Studio, Live Assistant product names; 'more than 15 open-source and proprietary models' verbatim; 'nearly half the Fortune 50' (article rephrases as 'more than 40 percent of the Fortune 50' — accurate paraphrase, not in quotes); $350M round eight months earlier confirmed. • source-4 (PYMNTS, WebFetch fallback): Confirms Bret Taylor 'There's a really big addressable market and immediate opportunity' verbatim; Taylor's $400 billion customer-service spend estimate; 'a third of the world's biggest banks' phrasing (article rephrases as 'one-third of the world's largest banks' — equivalent). Every inline link points to a source containing the specific claim. No misattribution. No fabricated quantitative claims.

All factual claims verified against sources. The article handles competing valuation figures ($15B SiliconANGLE vs $15.8B elsewhere) responsibly in 'What We Don't Know'. The 'eight months' framing from $10B (Sept 2025) to $15.8B (May 2026) is correct.

APPROVE_WITH_CORRECTIONS. All facts verified, no hallucinations, well-attributed throughout. Verdict driven by 3-source allowlist gap, 1 consent-gate redirect (Yahoo), and 1 bot-blocked source (PYMNTS 403) — all resolved via manual fallback verification. Article is publishable as-is.