This bad review is definitely not AI.
We’ve written before about Peter Thiel-backed Icon, the startup that bills itself as the “first AI ad maker.” Its CEO and founder, Kennan Davison, has largely chosen to build in public—highlighting the company’s offerings on X rather than engaging the press. The risk with that approach, of course, is that when someone posts criticism on X, it can snowball quickly.
Case in point: Yesterday, Arib Khan, founder of 24 Labs—a company that’s acquired a portfolio of AI startups, some of which could arguably compete with Icon—posted this blunt critique:
Yeesh! Not your average negative review, especially coming from a fellow founder and an investor/acquirer. Arib later said he had to cancel his credit card to stop being charged.
In response, Icon’s Davison replied with the following:
Good response! Not combative, but empathetic and seemingly helpful. The two ended things fairly cordially, and it seems the issue is resolved for now. You can check the full thread on X for the complete exchange.
Quick note: this follows a semi-weird X post from Kennan the other day where he wrote that he was looking for “2 Founding Ops/Success hires” and said that the “ideal background” includes, among other things, “athlete in college.” Hm. Building in public is hard!
Why This Matters:
AI continues to dominate the conversation in marketing and advertising. As interest grows, so does the number of players entering the space.
On different sides of the spectrum, you have a company like Icon on the creative side. Meanwhile, on the other end, you have more of an OG-backed Scope3 pivoting from a struggling carbon emissions-focused model to AI-powered solutions. There are about 10,000 others who are looking to capitalize on the AI hype, as well. But as with any trend, it can sometimes be hard to figure out what’s actually meaningful, real innovation versus marketing speak/BS.
Experts React:
Investor Eric Franchi recently posted, “AI is reigniting investor interest in ad tech.” With that excitement, of course, comes the risk of bad actors overhyping solutions. (Think metaverse, but obviously that ended up being much hollower than AI.) Proper vetting is critical to ensure products are real, scalable, and effective (Eric and Aperiam are very good at that and have a great roster).
Our Take:
The launch of ChatGPT-4o’s image generation capabilities is a reminder that AI’s biggest near-term impact on adtech may be in creative. The speed, quality, and customization OpenAI now offers is unmatched—and it’s likely to drive major changes across the creative side of advertising this year. This will be, in our view, one of the biggest changes in adtech this year as a number of companies are basically going to be put out of business by it.
Other AI applications, like agentic media buying, certainly show promise but face much steeper hurdles. Scaling these solutions inside complex organizations, whether brand or agency—where workflows, compliance, and vendor fragmentation remain barriers—will take time. Not impossible, but certainly not imminent.
