OpenAI’s Multi-Billion Ad Strategy, Modal Labs CEO on AI Infrastructure, Twilio’s Voice AI Surge

OpenAI is aggressively scaling its advertising business, shifting from general brand awareness to conversion-oriented ads that measure specific user actions like purchases or app downloads. This strategy targets small and medium-sized businesses, aiming to capture market share from dominant players like Meta and Google. Meanwhile, Modal Labs, which recently raised $355 million at a $4.65 billion valuation, provides a specialized infrastructure layer that abstracts away complex GPU management, enabling engineers to build and scale AI applications with greater flexibility. Despite the hype surrounding AI-driven growth, Twilio’s recent stock surge faces scrutiny; while its voice unit is a key catalyst, the company’s revenue growth is not yet clearly accelerating due to AI, and its usage-based pricing model faces long-term risks as AI agents potentially reduce the duration of customer support interactions.