Why it matters
How vendors meter AI decides who absorbs runaway agent costs. If pricing moves to pay-per-resolved-outcome, buyers stop funding tokens burned on dead-end loops and pay only for work that actually lands.
Tokenmaxxing read
Outcome pricing inverts the tokenmaxxing incentive: pay per result, not per token, and extra model calls become the vendor cost to manage, not yours. Pega CTO Don Schuerman names escalating, unpredictable agent costs as what clients now budget against.
Source takeaway
Sharp CFO-desk read on AI pricing models. The named vendors are talking their own book, so treat the move to outcome pricing as a directional signal, not a settled industry standard.
