B2B SaaS companies are all over the map when it comes to sharing their pricing online. Will the incursion of AI into the buying process change that? In this post we explore how buyers might use prompts to estimate price and value. And then we test it in our own category of value based pricing and customer value management. We end with some predictions and recommendations on if, when and how to present your price so that generative AI can use it in recommendations.

How will AI agents restructure the B2B SaaS sector? One frame for this is Clayton Christensen’s framework of disruptive innovation. Are B2B AI agents an example of sustaining or disruptive innovation? How does this impact go-ot-market strategies? What are the implications for pricing?

There are three key axes for B2B AI applications that are leading to six basic approaches to application development. The three axes are: is use episodic or ongoing, does it support decisions or make decisions, and is the application intended for defined problems or open problems. This has a big impact on value and pricing models. Understanding where your application is placed frames value and pricing design.

AI agents have emerged as a key pattern to package AI functionality. 2025 is being called the year of agentic AI! How will all these agents deliver value? How will they be packaged and priced? How will billing work? Subscription building leader Maxio and customer value management leader Ibbaka are partnering to answer these questions.

Ibbaka is leveraging its value model generation AI to generate a series of Category Value Reports. These reports combine value models and generative AI to get new insights into the structure of B2B software markets. Our first report is on Learning Solutions. In this report we generated value models for six category leaders and then combined them to get a feel for what drives value in the category.

Category Value Maps are a new tool for understanding a software category. They help buyers decide which vendor is the best fit for their needs and vendors to get an external view of their positioning from the perspective of a generative AI process. They are made possible by the recent development of generated value models, economic value models created and maintained with generative AI. Ibbaka has generated the Category Value Map for Learning Solutions as its first demonstration of this powerful new tool.

Many agents are being introduced to the market to help with the saes process. There are AIs for Sales Development Representatives, for crafting sales content and for analyzing calls. Most modern CRMs use AI to predict what will close and when. What will happen when these agents encounter agents acting for the buyer? This is happening today and the world is about to get a lot weirder. We offer case studies for buyers of CRMs and sales intelligence.

Service as Software (SaS or SaaS) is emerging as a central pattern for the monetization of business AI. What services will be first to fall to this new paradigm? One possibility is Business Process Outsourcing of BPO. Companies are already used to blackboxing and outsourcing these services, have good performance metrics, and are cost driven. Established pricing models can be migrated to Service as Software.

The concept blend of generative AI, monetization, pricing and customer value management is bringing together terms not often used together. Tokens are an important part of transformer models and are also being used as a pricing metric. The Ibbaka AI Monetization in 2025 includes a handy glossary to keep track of these terms.

The Ibbaka AI Monetization in 2025 survey report is getting a lot of interest as it has the deepest data on how AI-enabled B2B SaaS and B2B AI are being monetized. On January 23 Ibbaka will have a webinar with pricing and monetization experts Mark Stiving and Michael Mansard to go deep into the findings and recommendations.

Ibbaka’s second Annual report on AI Monetization is now available. The report is based on a survey of more than 300 B2B companies that are bringing AI enabled or AI applications to market. It includes four mini case studies, proposes four emerging packaging patterns and defines three different approaches that companies are taking. The report is essential reading for anyone in the B2B AI applications space.

OpenAI has released its newest reasoning model o3. How will it be priced? Will OpenAI move from token pricing to task pricing? How would task based pricing work for o3? How would it impact pricing of agents and applications using o3?

Commercialization of B2B generative AI is coalescing around four patterns: Co-Pilots, Agents, Generators and Service as Software. Which pattern will dominate in 2025? How does one price each of these patterns? Prepare for change in 2025.

Amazon is making some big plays as it tries to establish a growth flywheel for AWS in the generative AI era. This includes offering its own chips as alternatives to Nvidia, offering its own models, and supporting the idea that no one model will or should win. Amazon’s pricing for its own models is generally cheaper than the alternatives. How will this impact packaging and pricing in 2025? We offer some suggestions.

Is customer support the killer app for B2B generative AI? We have some early results from the AI Monetization in 2025 survey that suggest widespread adoption of this class of solutions. This is also where we are seeing the strongest evidence for outcome based pricing. Will the success of customer support cascade over into other B2B applications?

There have been large investments in AI since the release of ChatGPT 3.5 back in November 2022. VC firms have poured money into startups and existing firms have shifted R&D priorities to implement AI-based functionality. We are now seeing the emergence of second generation generative AI apps for B2B and new approaches to pricing. In the second edition of this survey we ask about shifting attitudes towards AI and emerging monetization paradigms.

Ibbaka conducted a survey to help inform the AI Monetization Roundtable with Michael Mansard from Zuora and Kyle Poyar from Growth Unhinged. The survey results are shared here. Key insights include (i) Pricing approaches for horizontal and vertical applications are diverging sharply , (ii) the most common approach to pricing is value based and (iii) The B2B SaaS community is divided on the future impact of generative AI.

What were the key findings from the PeakSpan Ibbaka NRR Survey for 2024? There is a growing cluster of disruptive companies with emergent patterns. Some companies in this cluster have the unexpected pattern of high churn with high revenue expansion. Dedicated teams responsible for expansion revenue are outperforming. There are early indications that Machine to Machine companies will have strong NRR performance. Packaging patterns have an impact on NRR performance.

This is the second year that PeakSpan and Ibbaka have collaborated to understand benchmarks and best practices in B2B SaaS. Continuity is important because it allows us to see trends in the data. The report documents the disruption being caused in B2B SaaS by generative AI.