Vendor Pricing Experiments Leave CIOs' AI Costs In Flux
CIO, Monday, September 1st, 2025
Some AI providers are evolving pricing rates or models every month as competition, a race for market dominance, and high computing costs create competing pressures.
AI vendors are experimenting with pricing rates and models, creating cost uncertainty for enterprise CIOs deploying the technology, according to industry observers.
While many AI vendors have moved to hybrid pricing models that combine subscriptions with use- or outcome-based pricing, these strategies are not set in stone, says Brian Clark, president of go-to-market initiatives at billing software vendor Chargebee.
In some cases, AI vendors are changing their pricing rates or models every few weeks, Clark says, taking the agile development philosophy and applying it to pricing, with agile product monetization practices, including targeted pricing by persona and by product.