OpenAI to charge only when AI works

The shift to outcome-based pricing reflects growing pressure on AI vendors to prove their value, as AI products are expensive to run and haven't yet sped up revenue growth at software companies. Customers' IT budgets are strained by competing tools like Anthropic's Claude, which recently pushed harder toward billing by usage. Salesforce lets companies choose how to pay for its own AI, Agentforce, including contracts tied to how much the AI lifts revenue or cuts costs, as CEO Marc Benioff explained: the software should be paid for based on the revenue it brings in, not just the number of calls it closes.

The tricky part becomes attribution: determining whether a cost saving or a closed sale came from the software or from the customer. Stripe has published guidelines on this, noting that results could stem from product changes, marketing campaigns, or seasonality. Without clear rules, customers might dispute that the vendor drove the success. Adobe, for its part, will bill part of its newly bundled AI suite, CX Enterprise, by the value it creates, such as completed ad campaigns, but hasn't named specific prices, and existing AI features for photo and video editing are excluded from this model.