How Cheesecake Labs is Strengthening its AI Leadership

Artificial intelligence has moved decisively beyond experimentation, and we can see it growing more and more every year, with projections reaching $260 billion in 2025 and over $1,200 billion by 2030, according to Statista studies. Today, the organizations seeing real returns are those that treat AI as a core capability and are deeply connected to data, processes, and measurable business outcomes.

At Cheesecake Labs, we’re investing more in our leadership, structuring our teams more, and delivering AI solutions that scale.

A recent milestone in this journey is the completion of the AI & Machine Learning: Business Applications executive program at theUniversity of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business by Doug Silva, our CTO and Partner.

The program focuses on applying AI and machine learning to real business challenges — bridging technical depth with strategic execution.

Hear from our CTO

Moving AI from concept to competitive advantage

“AI is no longer about prototypes or pretty demos,” Doug explains. “It’s about designing systems that connect real data, real processes, and real business outcomes.”

This perspective reflects a reality many companies face: without context, governance, and alignment with business metrics, even the most advanced models fail to deliver value.

The program reinforced core principles that now inform how Doug leads our engineering and AI practices. These include grounding AI initiatives in proprietary data, defining success metrics early, and ensuring models are deployed as part of resilient, observable systems — not isolated experiments.

Read more: AI Use Cases & Applications: How Businesses Are Leveraging AI

Why deployment is only the beginning

One of the most impactful takeaways is that deployment is not the finish line. In production environments, AI systems must evolve continuously. MLOps practices, such as monitoring, versioning, rollback strategies, and performance optimization, are essential to sustaining long-term impact.

This mindset is now embedded across our AI engagements, enabling clients to operate AI systems with the same rigor as any mission-critical platform. The program also emphasized multimodal AI as a key frontier.

By combining text, images, audio, and structured data, businesses can unlock richer insights and automate more complex workflows. This capability is increasingly relevant for enterprises seeking to modernize operations and create differentiated digital products.

Strengthening services through expert leadership

Doug’s experience is not an isolated achievement — it reinforces a broader strategy at Cheesecake Labs, since we are continuously strengthening our services through a leadership team deeply knowledgeable in AI, product engineering, and emerging technologies.

This ensures our clients benefit from hands-on expertise at every stage, from AI strategy and opportunity assessment to scalable deployment.

Prompt engineering itself has evolved into systems engineering. Today, our teams design agent-based architectures and AI-native systems that integrate seamlessly with cloud infrastructure, security requirements, and business logic. 

By investing in leadership, education, and execution excellence, we ensure our clients are not just adopting AI, but using it to grow, compete, and lead.

Finally, we would like to congratulate Doug on this achievement, which is as important to him as it is to us at Cheesecake Labs, having an inspiring leader who is bringing his knowledge to our team.