Hi Raj,
If the cost of running an AI agent can vary a lot from task to task, how do teams determine pricing while keeping profits and financial risk under control?
CPA here. The math on this is brutal because of the fixed fee floor. If an agent performs a $0.05 task, a standard $0.30 + 2.9% fee structure puts you at a negative margin immediately. This is a solvency issue, not just a pricing one. You literally cannot monetize granular, high frequency agent traffic with legacy banking rails. The only way the P&L works for micro services ($0.01 to $0.10) is via rails where the settlement cost is negligible (<$0.001), regardless of the asset class used.
As costs vary, I think it becomes even more important to track costs for each task.
Also, if costs also vary a lot without usefulness, it becomes difficult to pass these costs onto the customer.
Hence pricing needs to take care of volatility in cost as well. However, pricing is mostly dependent on the value AI Agents create. That I think, AI builders need to generate somehow, instead of just activity.