In the past 12 months, a clear pattern has emerged: as AI systems replace manual effort with automated intelligence, pricing structures tied to “seats” no longer reflect the value customers receive. Pricing models have surfaced as a hot topic with every portfolio company at Mosaic and is top-of-mind for nearly every founder building applied-AI products. When one person and an AI agent can outperform an entire legacy team, charging per user starts to feel arbitrary; what matters is how much business impact the product delivers.

Founders are experimenting with three broad approaches:

• Usage-metered plans that bill against tokens, API calls, or minutes of inference time. These create a direct bridge between consumption and margin and nudge teams to track cost from day one.
  
  
• Outcome-based pricing that charges per lead booked, ticket resolved, or document drafted—tying revenue to measurable results. It’s the software analogue of value-based care.
  
  
• Hybrid “starter bundle plus runway” tiers: a predictable monthly fee with a healthy allowance of AI credits, then pay-as-you-go beyond that. This balances budget certainty for customers with upside capture for the vendor.
  
  

Across our portfolio, a few design principles keep showing up:

1. Anchor on a metric the customer already tracks. If your product shortens sales cycles, price per opportunity accelerated—not per login.
   
   
2. Bundle enough volume to eliminate credit anxiety. No one wants to ration prompts.
   
   
3. Expose real-time usage. Transparent dashboards prevent bill shock and build trust.
   
   
4. Instrument cost early. Metering and billing belong in the product backlog, not the finance queue.
   
   
5. Plan for non-linear jumps. When a model upgrade multiplies compute, re-grade tiers before your gross margin does it for you.
   
   

AI’s promise is to shift human effort from repetitive execution to higher-order creativity. If our pricing still counts bodies instead of business results, we undermine that promise. The companies that map price to outcomes—while keeping the buying experience refreshingly simple—will capture the most upside.

I’d love to hear how others are managing the move from seats to usage and outcomes. What’s working, what still feels messy, and where do you see the biggest opportunities to innovate on pricing?

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