Twilio went public in June 2016 as a developer-focused cloud communications platform. It rode the COVID-era software boom to stratospheric heights before crashing back. Today it has reinvented itself as artificial intelligence infrastructure for autonomous customer engagement agents, with FY2025 free cash flow of $945.4 million and over 400,000 active customer accounts.
Back then, the Pike Place Starbucks only sold whole bean coffee. Today, it's the most visited Starbucks in the world. The history of the company is bound up in the very foundation, walls, and floorboards of our first store in the city's historic market.
For OpenAI to do this alone without the help of consulting firms would be a hard and a time-consuming process. So I think it was the right call to scale the adoption of their Frontier platform globally for large businesses. Additionally, a lot of these firms bring other best practices and expertise in areas such as cybersecurity services, data services, sovereignty setup services etc.
After getting laid off in 2023, marketing veteran Julie Levin worked part time as a bartender for about six months as she considered her next steps. Levin is now the head of brand partnerships at Two Things, a New York City consultancy specializing in business transformations. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity. I moved across the country from LA to the New York area in 2022 for a really exciting job that I thought would mark the next phase of my career.
Giving up a large share of revenue in a thriving business all for a fly? Hans-Dietrich Reckhaus, the owner of the Reckhausen family-owned chemical company in Deppendorf, Germany, did exactly that. When the 59-year-old CEO took over his family's insecticide company from his father in 1995, he didn't pay much attention to flies or insects. Like his father before him, he was manufacturing everything needed to eliminate them bug spray, ant powder, moth paper and fly traps.
AI remains a powerful driver of transformation for our clients and for IBM. Our generative AI book of business continues to accelerate and now stands at more than $7.5bn.
