Google AI Ultra

This is the kind of pricing that I expect most AI companies are gonna try to push for, and it might get even more expensive with time. When you see the delta between what's currently being burnt by OpenAI and what they bring home, the sweet point is going to be hard to find.

Whether you find that you get $250 worth out of that subscription is going to be the big question

I agree, and the problem is that "value" != "utilization".

It costs the provider the same whether the user is asking for advice on changing a recipe or building a comprehensive project plan for a major software product - but the latter provides much more value than the former.

How can you extract an optimal price from the high-value use cases without making it prohibitively expensive for the low-value ones?

Worse, the "low-value" use cases likely influence public perception a great deal. If you drive the general public off your platform in an attempt to extract value from the professionals, your platform may never grow to the point that the professionals hear about it in the first place.

Value capture pricing is a fantasy often spouted by salesmen, the current era AI systems have limited differentiation, so the final cost will trend towards the cost to run the system.

So far I have not been convinced that any particular platform is more than 3 months ahead of the competition.

OpenAI claims their $200/month plan is not profitable. So this is cost level pricing, not value capture level pricing.

Not profitable given their loss-leader rate limits.

Platforms want Planet Fitness type subscriptions, recurring revenue streams where most users rarely use the product.

That works fine at the $20/month price point but it won't work at $200+ per month because the instant I stop using an expensive plan, I cancel.

And if I want to use $1000 worth of the expensive plan I get stopped by rate limits.

Maybe the ultra-level would generate more revenue with bigger market share (but lower margin) with a pay-per-token plan.