Enterprise software companies are accelerating pricing overhauls as they move to sell AI-based services.

In the process, outcome-based pricing, which charges based on usage or only when AI completes work properly, appears to be spreading quickly in place of existing per-user flat fees. It appears to be a practical card pulled out as companies weigh how to make money from AI, which has high costs.

A recent report by The Information said Salesforce, a major software-as-a-service company, has begun letting customers choose how they pay for its Agentforce AI agent platform. Options include customised contracts that charge fees based on how much AI increases a customer's sales or how much it cuts costs by automating customer service work. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff (마크 베니오프) said, "Customers want to buy and pay in various ways. I've come to feel this in a real way recently."

That move by Salesforce is linked to a growing number of rivals, especially AI startups, putting forward outcome-based pricing models rather than flat-rate or usage-based plans.

The Information said OpenAI has also begun offering some key customers an option to pay only when AI finishes tasks such as customer support. AI-based customer management startups such as Sierra and Fin, which Salesforce is in the process of acquiring, are also charging only when AI completes tasks without human involvement.

In the case of coding AI assistant company Cognition, it is approaching sales while pledging to provide up to $10 million worth of credits if its service fails to deliver engineering results commensurate with what customers pay. The Information reported some established software companies such as Adobe, HubSpot and Zendesk are already moving to charge only when AI delivers results.

Benioff said, "It will go further than something you can simply call outcome-based billing. It'll be like, 'We increased revenue by this much, so pay $2'," signalling it will expand outcome-based pricing.

The Information said Salesforce's move is also similar to the Palantir model. Palantir negotiates customised contracts with corporate customers to integrate data and develop applications. Related to this, Palantir charges fees by combining usage and outcome-based billing with flat-rate plans. Benioff said, "A flexible approach to AI billing allowed us to sign very large contracts with customers."

From a user's perspective, outcome-based pricing may look like an attractive option, but it could also complicate the process of judging whether results such as cost savings came from the adopted software or from the customer's own efforts.

The possibility of disputes between customers and software companies cannot be ruled out. Payment services company Stripe also released guidelines on outcome-based billing.

Stripe said, "Outcomes may have resulted not from software but from product improvements, marketing campaigns, seasonal factors and more," and explained, "If standards are not clear on whose outcomes they are, customers can raise objections over whether those outcomes are due to the software company."