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Deepak Gupta markGTM Map

Pattern · 7 companies · 4 counter-examples

AI moved seat pricing to usage

Seven companies that sold seats or plans added usage or credit pricing in a phase that began in 2024 or 2025, alongside their AI products; four others priced on usage long before AI.

How this was counted: A company counts when its first phase with a usage-pricing motion begins in 2024 or later and that phase also introduces AI products in the record. Companies whose first usage-pricing phase is a decade or more older are counter-examples.

The evidence

Each row is a sourced phase in that company's record. Follow the link for the citations.

  • Salesforce · Agentforce, digital labor and consumption pricing · 2024 to now

    Usage pricingPrimary

    Agents are priced on use: $2 per conversation at launch, then Flex Credits at $0.10 per action from May 2025, with a Flex Agreement that shifts spend between user licenses and digital labor. The 10-K admits limited experience pricing consumption contracts.

  • Figma · Platform seats, IPO and AI credits · 2024 to now

    Usage pricingSupporting

    AI credits came to all seats in 2025, with limits enforced and add-on or pay-as-you-go plans from March 2026. The second quarter of 2026 was the first full quarter of AI credit monetization.

  • GitLab · AI agents and hybrid pricing · 2024 to now

    Usage pricingSupporting

    Seat pricing covers the platform and usage-based GitLab Credits cover Duo Agent Platform capabilities. Premium and Ultimate include monthly credits, and GitLab Flex puts seats and credits under one annual commitment.

  • Asana · AI Studio, credits, and the agentic platform · 2024 to now

    Usage pricingPrimary

    AI Studio is consumption-based: each paid tier includes a monthly credit allotment, and more credits can be bought. Moskovitz describes a platform fee with tokens and a la carte use after that. Aziz Megji, CFO since March 2026, frames consumption and outcome-based revenue as an expansion path alongside seats.

  • Cursor · Enterprise push and consumption pricing · 2025 to now

    Usage pricingPrimary

    In June 2025 Pro moved from request limits to compute limits with $20 of included usage, and a $200 Ultra tier was added. Cursor apologised that the change came as a surprise and offered refunds. The CEO later described the direction as a consumption model.

  • Notion · AI in the business plans, enterprise sales, agent credits · 2025 to now

    Usage pricingSupporting

    Custom Agents launched in February 2026 on usage-based Notion credits sold on top of the seat price, which stayed the same with other AI features included. Paid credits went live in May 2026 at $10 per 1,000.

  • monday.com · Hybrid sales-led GTM and the AI Work Platform · 2025 to now

    Usage pricingSupporting

    In May 2026 the company launched the AI Work Platform with native AI agents and a seats-plus-credits pricing model, which it calls a shift to consumption-based pricing. AI products were 17% of net new ARR in Q2 2026.

Counter-examples

Companies in the dataset that did the opposite and still worked.

  • Twilio · Developer-first self-service and pay as you go

    Pay-as-you-go pricing from its first phase in 2008.

  • Stripe · Payments for developers

    Priced per successful charge from launch in 2011.

  • Snowflake · Cloud data warehouse, sold on consumption

    Consumption pricing from its first phase in 2012.

  • Shopify · Payments, paid search and the IPO

    Payments fees tied revenue to merchant sales from 2013.

What it means

Reading the pattern

Analysis by Deepak Gupta, built on the records above.

  • Seats price the person; AI work is done by software that runs whether or not a person is watching. Every company in the supporting set kept seats and added a metered layer on top, rather than replacing seats outright.
  • The counter-examples were infrastructure from the start: API calls, payments, and compute were always metered. Application companies are now learning what infrastructure companies already knew.
  • Cursor's record shows the risk: its move to compute-based pricing came with an apology for unclear communication and refunds. Metering a habit people did not used to count needs more explanation than a price change.

Motions in this pattern: Usage pricing.

Share this pattern

AI moved seat pricing to usage: Seven companies that sold seats or plans added usage or credit pricing in a phase that began in 2024 or 2025, alongside their AI products; four others priced on usage long before AI.1080 by 1350, for LinkedIn and X