AI's Hard Economics for Good Times: Navigating pricing, costs, and monetization
Blog post from Orb
A panel discussion hosted by Orb and Baseten brought AI industry experts together to explore the multifaceted challenges of pricing, costs, and monetization in the AI sector. The conversation, moderated by Corinne Marie Riley from Greylock, included insights from leaders such as Matan-Paul Shetrit from Writer, Kshitij Grover from Orb, Joshua Ma from Airtable, Evan Conrad from San Francisco Compute, and Tuhin Srivastava from Baseten. The panel addressed the balance between innovation and revenue generation, emphasizing the importance of aligning AI capabilities with customer-perceived value and the necessity for AI startups to consider monetization strategies from the outset. As the AI market evolves, emerging trends in pricing models, like prepaid credits, value-based pricing, and hybrid models, were discussed, alongside the challenges of enterprise sales in the AI era and the build versus buy dilemma in AI development. The discussion concluded with a focus on the future of AI models, suggesting a strategic blend of generalized and specialized models to maximize customer value, and underscoring the need for AI companies to remain flexible and innovative in both technology and business approaches to harness the transformative potential of AI.