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ZDNET's key takeaways
AI usage is moving to token-based pricing.
Token pricing is far more expensive than the previous flat-fee model.
Measuring the value derived from AI remains an unsolved problem.
SAN DIEGO -- A few months ago, most people paid a flat fee for their AI access. That was then. This is now. The days of AI pricing as a loss-leader are over. As everyone has discussed here at FinOps X 2026, AI's token-based pricing model is becoming the foundation of the entire generative AI economy, and it's far more expensive than older models. Just ask CoPilot users who are having fits over the new token-based pricing.
For many enterprise customers, this reminds them of the early days of cloud pricing when they had to deal with volatile invoices and business models shifting under their feet. Underneath the confusion, tokens are quietly standardizing how labs translate scarce GPU capacity into billable units, how enterprises measure AI usage, and how software vendors reprice their products.
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Tokens: The atomic units of AI
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