Why it matters
Intercom is beating their frontier API at one tenth the cost. Pinterest claims orders of magnitude. Ben Cowen from Modal argues this pattern is not the exception for maturing AI products. It is the destination. Frontier labs want their models to win at everything. You want to win at your specific business logic. Those
My takeaway: What Lies Beneath the API — Benjamin Cowen, Modal is a model-evaluation signal. The practical read is to tie capability claims to evidence, launch criteria, and regression tests rather than relying on demos or benchmark headlines.