Zhang says that his company earns on each individual conversation after excluding certain general costs, but refused to comment on the general profitability of the startup. With $ 100 million collected From Venture Capital investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Accel, Decagon has elasticity in the priority of growth in the field of profitability. “Regardless of whether we could value more, it is always like” what if? “He says. “In general,” generally speaking, we are very happy now. “
“So cheap”
Erica Brescia, managing director at the Redpoint Ventures investment company, had a revelation about AI agent prices last month. The price of USD 250 in the fresh AI Ultra AI plan surprised her. “All this is so cheap,” he remembers thinking. “It is disproportionate to the value that people receive.” She felt that the price would make more sense at least twice. (In the same week said the general director of Nvidia Jensen Huang Stratechairs that he will employ an AI agent for $ 100,000 per year – in a heartbeat.)
Earlier, Brescia worked as an operational director of Github, who helped set the bar for artificial intelligence prices. Copilot Github coding assistant began with USD 10 per month in 2022months before the debut of chatgpt. Brescia says that Github went with a price that would attract the critical mass of users. The goal was to collect data to improve the service, and the home company Github, Microsoft, had nothing against losing the fresh tool to make it happen. In fact, the price 100 times higher would now reflect the value that provides software programmers, estimates Brescia. (Operational Director GitHub, Kyle Daigle, tells Wired that the company’s goal is support, not to replace, developers and that “Cina reflects the obligation to democratize access to powerful tools”))
Today, Copilot is at the top of USD 21 per month. Similar tools followed their conduct, including ZED, which received financing $ 12.5 million from Redpoint and others. In May, the company began to download at least USD 20 per month for the AI code editor, which he built from scratch.
The CEO of Zed Nathan Sobo expects AI to charge more over time, because current price models are balanced. But in relation to people, he wants AI agents to be affordable, so that everyone can exploit them to expand work, develop better software and create fresh jobs. “I want to have so many intelligence at my disposal for the lowest cost,” he says. “But for me, including a potentially younger engineer using this technology, preferably as low as possible.”
Zhang Decagon feels the same as for AI coding tools. “Would we pay more? Marginally? Yes, he says. But” 2000 $? Probably not. “He adds” the hunger for good engineers is infinite. “
AI entrepreneurs suggest that agents could command higher prices if they were easier to configure and more reliable to use. For example, Nandita Giri, a senior software engineer who worked at Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, claims that he pays thousands of dollars a year for the personal AI assistant. “But strict conditions are used” – you can’t frustrate using it, “he says.
Unfortunately, this day feels far away. As a personal project, Giri tried to develop an AI agent who could prevent mental burnout. “It just canceled all my meetings,” he says. Certainly a solution, but not perfect.
Now some companies employ “architects” to facilitate supervise agency systems and reduce blunders. The question is who will take these roles in the future if the early career employees are cut off from the possibilities. Simon Johnson, an economist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, does not expect companies to take into account the social costs of career disruption in making decisions regarding prices. He suggests that the rule will reduce pay taxes for basic roles to encourage employment. “The right lever to be pulled is the one that reduces costs for employers,” says Johnson.
Arrigoni chooses the third path. In AI flight, he prioritized the employment of younger engineers and did not exploit AI coding tools. If the Apocalypse of Work comes: “I don’t want to be guilty,” he says.