Who will pay for AI?

When Uber debuted, the company’s convenience and affordability changed the transportation landscape. At the time, there was a widespread belief that prices for Uber rides would only trend downward; yet, as more people adopted ridesharing, the low costs didn’t materialize.

In the same vein, the expansion of generative AI has given vast numbers of users access to free artificial intelligence, but recent price increases suggest the field is nearing its own watershed moment.

The question in this case is: Who will pay for AI? The technology has made an outsized impact on small businesses, which benefit from relatively larger leaps in productivity. But they can least afford to foot the bill. Enterprise companies, on the other hand, have larger budgets and economies of scale against subscriptions, but as yet haven’t seen the relative jump in utility that the smaller businesses have enjoyed. With impending price increases, there will be winners and losers among business customers; it remains to be seen who is who.

Earlier this year, Sam Altman of OpenAI stated the firm was operating at a financial loss on its $20-per-month membership. Internal documents revealed plans to hike subscriptions from $20 to $44 per month. Last year, Anthropic increased subscription fees for Claude Code. Perplexity rolled out a Max plan that costs $200 per month.

Other companies whose products depend on AI tech are also inflating their prices. Salesforce introduced a 6% rise in pricing for its bundles and rolled out an Agentforce AI feature priced from $125 per month. 

A lot of AI firms are still focused on building their user base at any expense, echoing Uber’s early approach—they’re more interested in dominating the market and fulfilling customer needs than turning a profit. But the abundance of free and low-priced services is really just a result of unsustainable venture funding. 

A major shift in pricing is happening as investors grow impatient for profits. AI companies need higher revenue to stay ahead of costs because, unlike conventional software, AI tools incur additional costs for electricity and water with every use.

The new pricing models are different based on how much customers use the service, leading to greater charges for those with heavier usage. The costs will affect businesses that rely on third-party AI models for their own offerings. 

Companies building software on top of AI interfaces are reaching a crossroads—they’ll either need to transfer these substantial cost jumps to their clients or risk operating at a loss.

Ultimately, business users could pay between $50 and $100 monthly, while those with greater demands might see fees as high as $500 each month.

Enterprise-based AI tools, such as those from Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft may be insulated from reduced adoption because they’ve already set records for winning new customers over the past three years. These companies can afford to lose customers as long as the millions who remain are paying subscription fees. They also have deep pockets to weather storms, in a way that investor-supported companies like Perplexity do not.

Small business customers who have enjoyed a free boost in productivity need to make some decisions: yes, monthly subscriptions will hit them harder than larger organizations with greater margins, but if they’ve seen large jumps in productivity, the decision is a no brainer.