[simonw]

The Uber $1,500/engineer/month thing is just the first signal we have had of the price companies may be willing to accept. This price will clearly vary wildly across professions, industries and geographies.

I think it's a poor number to build an "AI is slowing down" narrative around.

[B56b]

The problem is that $1500/engineer/month would be a pretty modest amount of demand for labs. OpenAI/Anthropic are basing their $1T valuations on the explosive uncapped growth of unlimited agentic token spending. On so many levels of the industry this growth is now priced in. You don't think so?

[simonw]

I don't have a particularly great answer to that question - I'm not enough of a financial analysis to have confidence in an opinion.

I do however think that shouting "look, Uber capped pricing at $1500/engineer/month hence AI is slowing down" is a questionable position to take.

[owebmaster]

> I don't have a particularly great answer to that question

Maybe you could use your $1,500 quota to ask AI for better arguments?

[simonw]

I mean, I did that already for my own curiosity... but I'm not about to share those on a public forum and pretend I have expertise that I don't.

[famouswaffles]

>OpenAI/Anthropic are basing their $1T valuations on the explosive uncapped growth of unlimited agentic token spending.

No they're not. In reality, actual 'explosive uncapped growth of unlimited agentic token spending' will result in valuations several times more than a 'mere' $1T.

[lunar_mycroft]

Uber is not the only company that's putting a per-developer limit on AI spending. I know this because I work for another one (and we have a significantly lower limit). You just heard about Uber first because they're high profile.

[simonw]

I didn't say they were the only company, I said they were the "first signal".

The more signals the better! What cap did your company pick, and what geography / kind of industry are you in?

[lunar_mycroft]

(Sorry I'm being vague, but I'm not sure I'm not sure what's public knowledge)

The cap is moderately above the high subscription tiers, and managements/the executives were clearly extremely concerned about how expensive it would be if we all or even mostly came close to hitting it. I heard that they originally wanted to go lower but the developers in the pilot program blew past their planned limit very quickly.

As for the company, its almost entirely B2B SaaS (I think it has some offerings that are used by consumers, but they're mostly/entirely paid for by another business on behalf of their customers), and they have developers all over the world, although the headquarters and biggest group of developers is in silicon valley (my office is in the midwest).