API management is a core part of the infrastructure in the agent economy. Ibbaka recently studied value in the API management category and uncovered some important ways APIs are creating value and competing with each other. The report includes a value map for the API management category and a design structure matrix (DSM) that shows the key clusters of functionality in this category.

There are two different visions emerging for the role agents will play in B2B software. One view is that agents will be add ons to larger standard enterprise applications. The other view is that agents will become the main point of interaction and value creation. Both have quite different implications for pricing. We polled our LinkedIn communities to get additional insights into this. Of course there are multiple possible futures here and all may emerge in different B2B software sectors.

There has been a lot of discussion of how to price AI agents. But the busines senvironment is changing and the question has changed. Business leaders are now asking how agents are changing pricing. The rapid emergence of an AI driven agent economy is changing how we think about pricing of all B2B software and is leaking into many other conversations. This post explores these critical questions.

Agents are popping up everywhere. Vibe coding and good tooling have made it easy to develop agents. Users and buyers are looking for simple solutions that leverage AI. Agents are the result. There are two broad trends: net new agents and agents built to access functionality and data in existing apps. How do pricing approaches differ in these two cases?

One emerging strategy for designing and pricing a family of agents is the team. Agents are being designed as complements or replacements for well established functional teams. An example of this in the data space is Brighthive. They have designed their agents to reflect well established roles on a data team.

Over the past three months there has been a sea change in packaging and pricing for AI. The biggest change has been the rise of agents. But there has also been a shift to making AI the default. We can see that in recent moves by some of the world’s leading software companies: Intercom, Adobe and Gong.

An emergent pattern in the agent economy is for companies to provide their customers with the ability to build custom agents that sit on their platforms and help the customer get more value. These are often called User Built Agents. How is value created for customers with this new functionality? How will it be priced? Ibbaka used it value model generation AI to explore these critical questions.

On April 24 Ibbaka published some important research on pricing and billing in the agent economy. This is the first in depth report on the emergent Agent Economy. Agents are becoming one of the primary ways that generative AI functionality is being brought to market. The report is rather long, more than 80 pages, and in today’s high paced world not everyone will want to invest the time to read in depth We get that. Here are a series of prompts, and responses from Perplexity, that give different entry points into the report.

Pricing AI Agents is a critical challenge for pricing and innovation in 2025. Two approaches have emerged so far, the Ibbaka Agent Pricing Layer Cake and the Growth Unhinged Agent Pricing Matrix. Let’s look at how these work and how they can be used to price AI agents. As credit based pricing is becoming common for AI agents the two approaches are combined to address this.

The Agent Economy is rewriting the rules for B2B software and launching a revolution as important as the one Salesforce launched back at the beginning of the 21st C with its ‘No Software’ SaaS business model. Ibabka has compiled extensive research, including primary research, on the implications of agents for value, packaging, pricing and billing. This extensive report will help you execute on the changes we all need to make.

The agent economy will replace the subscription economy and most value currently captured within enterprise software will be delivered by agents. This will require new approaches to pricing. By combining the Jobs to be Done approach to pricing with the Ibbaka AI agent pricing layer cake there is a path forward for Agentic AI companies.