AI Engineer YouTube · June 2, 2026

What Lies Beneath the API — Benjamin Cowen, Modal

What Lies Beneath the API — Benjamin Cowen, Modal video thumbnail
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: 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