From Twilio closing its largest deal in history to Benioff’s take on the current mass job cuts, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
Usage-based vendors are often accused of struggling to appeal to and retain those really substantial enterprise accounts.
Skeptics have traditionally questioned whether consumption-based pricing can support the kind of durable, multiyear commitments large enterprises typically demand.
Twilio’s latest quarterly results seem to contradict this narrative… in a fairly sizable way.
In Q4 2025, the company closed the largest deal in its history – a nine-figure renewal with a leading marketing automation platform – while deals worth more than $500,000 grew 36% year-over-year.
During the earnings call, Khozema Shipchandler, CEO of Twilio, said:
“We are moving beyond being a provider of communications channels and data toward becoming a foundational infrastructure layer in the age of AI.”
The inference is that Twilio is no longer pitching itself as a CPaaS vendor that sells messaging APIs to developers. Instead, it’s making the case for itself as core infrastructure – the kind of thing a Fortune 500 doesn’t quietly walk away from at renewal time.
The record deal is obviously significant, but the wider picture is just as important (Read more…)
Is AI Really Behind the Tech Layoff Wave? Benioff Says No
Salesforce Co-Founder and CEO, Marc Benioff, says companies cutting jobs for financial and structural reasons are hiding behind a convenient scapegoat… AI.
The wave of tech layoffs over the past 18 months has come with a familiar explanation attached: AI made us do it.
But Benioff isn’t buying it.
Speaking with Matt Berman on The Future Live, Benioff pushed back on what he called a fundamental misreading of what is actually driving job cuts across the sector.
For those working in customer service and the contact center, where the threat of AI displacement has never felt more real, his comments will undoubtedly raise an eyebrow or two.
In the discussion, Benioff argued that “most people still really understand what is going on.
“It’s too easy to basically take AI and make it the scapegoat. And I think for some CEOs, it’s the lazy way out.”
His argument appears to be that the contributing factors to the recent tech layoffs (Read more…)
The FCC doesn’t tend to make too many waves in the CX space.
But a new regulatory proposal from the United States Federal Communications Commission could significantly impact the contact center space moving forward.
Brought forward by FCC Chair Brendan Carr, the ruling would cap the volume of calls handled offshore, mandate disclosure when customers are speaking to agents outside the US, and require that customers can request a domestic transfer.
At first glance, the ‘why?’ seems fairly transparent.
Companies will be forced to bring more jobs back to America, which resonates with Carr’s broader Build America Agenda.
However, when you scratch beneath the surface, it becomes something more complicated – and more interesting, as Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, explains:
“On the surface, you can look at them as labor economics. But they’re also about data security, national security, and customer service.”
“And when you look at your side of the pond [the UK], everyone’s got … (Read more…)
Sprinklr Wants CX Leaders to Trust AI Agents With Proof, Not Promises
Sprinklr has launched its Spring ’26 release with a new capability it calls Autonomous Evaluation, designed to help enterprises validate and improve how AI agents perform in real customer service environments.
The update is built for a moment where AI agents are doing more work without human input. That shift creates a new problem for CX leaders. They need to prove agent behavior is reliable, explainable, and safe before scaling automation across channels.
Sprinklr says Autonomous Evaluation delivers explainable logs and test-backed validation so teams can understand and refine agent behavior over time. The goal is to give contact center and CX teams clearer confidence in what AI agents are doing and why.
In a product update statement, Karthik Suri, Chief Product Officer at Sprinklr, framed the release as a trust and scale move:
“With the Spring ’26 Release, we’re taking a major step forward in how enterprises drive outcomes with AI. As AI Agents resolve more customer issues autonomously, we’re giving teams the transparent, test-backed validation they need to trust and scale them. Paired with a more intuitive AI+ Studio and smarter copilots across the Sprinklr suite, these advancements help brands turn automation into measurable impact, and ultimately into more seamless, personalized moments of customer delight.”
Agentic AI is moving from experiments to (Read more…)
