Token Series Part 3 | Who’s Footing the Bill for AI?

The AI subsidy era ends as customers foot the bill

AI has run on a venture subsidy, and the bill is moving to customers. Venture-backed companies spend a fifth to half of human capital costs on AI while the wider economy spends 3% to 4% on software, so vendors at negative gross margins have begun passing token costs through. The repricing is led by legacy SaaS and private-equity-owned services rather than AI natives, and it is exposing how little of the plumbing behind credits and overages actually works.

Takeaways

• AI spend runs on a venture subsidy. Venture-backed companies spend 20% to 50% of human capital costs on AI, against 3% to 4% for the wider economy. Ali Hussain calls the last two years the greatest subsidy in history. CJ Gustafson says a $60,000 Anthropic bill buys $150,000 to $200,000 of service.
• Vendors can no longer shield inference costs. Tabs data shows token cost pass-through rising from under 10% of users a year earlier to 33% in August 2026, heading past half by year end. Vendors at negative 20% to negative 50% gross margins, down from 70% to 80%, can no longer shield inference.
• Legacy firms lead the AI repricing. The biggest movers are late-stage growth-backed SaaS and private-equity-owned services rather than AI natives. A variable model is now required or investors price a company as seat-based. The most common answer is a hybrid bundle with a commitment mixing seats, platform, agents and token pass-throughs.
• Overages go unbilled and margins pay. Few companies actually charge the overages written into their contracts, which removes any penalty for exceeding usage. Ali Hussain has seen $100m to $200m run-rate companies lose 10% to overage leakage, and calls the tracking a finance and accounting problem rather than a sales one.
• Credits are a 2026 headache with old roots. CJ Gustafson calls credits 2026's proliferation and Ali Hussain traces them to the Snowflake and Databricks selling model of five to ten years ago. A $30m company selling credits to RV parks now faces the tooling problem those vendors solved with tens of millions.
• Inference is commoditizing as models converge. Ali Hussain says some of his heaviest users are moving back to Codex, and one customer says Gemini bundled with G Suite is the cheapest option. Simple price-times-quantity pricing is gone, and he calls it a consumer way of thinking.

Where agentic commerce lands

• Ali Hussain expects more efficient pricing and negotiation and faster deal cycles once agents handle the back and forth.
• His bear case is bureaucracy, since human approval and existing controls are too entrenched for business to change overnight.