API access is becoming a tension point between AI agents and applications, legacy enterprise applications and their customers. AI has made data more valuable and placed new demands on systems. Legacy vendors are pushing back by throttling or even removing access. Customers believe that this data is their data and that they should decide who gets to access what data for what purpose. Legacy vendors may start to charge AIs for access, a cost that will be passed on the users.

Edward Wong leads Ibbaka’s research and community work. He is constantly using AI to explore ideas, test value and pricing models, develop databases of synthetic users and synthetic data and to document Ibbaka’s processes (Ibbaka documents its processes as context documents and prompt sequences. Here he explores his first two years of working with AI.

PeakSpan Capital and Ibbaka have launched our 3rd annual NRR survey. NRR (Net Revenue Retention) is one of the critical metrics that measures the health of a subscription business. This year (2025) finds the business software industry in a phase shift as the emergence of agents as a key packaging pattern threatens to disrupt established practices. Is this disruption real? Will it show up in NRR performance? This survey will help to answer these questions.

The fourth in Ibbaka’s research series on how agents are being introduced in different B2B software categories. This post focuses on the learning technology space (LMS, LCMS, LXP, microlearning). Most companies are using agents to complement their current platforms. Some our using agents to introduce net new functionality. Replacement is not yet a common strategy. Pricing models remain per user with little exploration of agent pricing.

The agent economy is transforming how functionality is packaged and priced. Different categories of B2B software are responding in different ways. In this post we look at revenue intelligence, companies like Clari, Grok and Salesloft. Four patterns are identified and the pricing implications drawn out. AI based agent first companies like Oliv.ai are threatening to disrupt this cateogry.

Billing and subscription management software is where pricing strategy and pricing model design are executed. It is critical functionality for the pricing and monetization of AI agents? But in general this category has been slow to adopt the agent paradigm itself. Stripe Billing has made important moves in enabling customers to build agents. Paid has a disruptive solution that is starting to get some traction. But the category lags on pricing transparency and the adoption of credit-based pricing.

Pricing is not a once and done thing. It is not even a process. It is a cycle. Every pricing action leads to a response from competitors and customers. Market conditions change. Pricing excellence comes from treating pricing as a cycle that begins and ends with value creation. The axel of the cycle is a deep understanding of value.

Agents are popping up all over as we shift from a subscription economy to an agent first economy. One example is the pricing software sector (PROS, Pricefx, Vendavo, Zilliant) where PROS and Pricefx are leading the drive to agents. Let’s compare the agent strategies of these four companies, see where there are overlaps and differentiation, and where there are gaps that innovators could drive through. How are (will) these agents be priced?

Vibe coding is transforming how everything from websites, to internal applications to agents and even enterprise software is developed.

There are many options available for vibe coding, but how are these priced and what does that tell us about the value and strategy of these companies?

Ibbaka has used its own vibe coded agents to help answer this question.

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.

OpenAI has been the defining company of the AI era and this applies to pricing as well. OpenAI has provided anchor points of $20 per month for basic generative AI and $200 per month for more advanced solutions. They have also signaled that price will increase exponentially as models get smarter. Other companies have followed suit. How does this frame pricing for AI app and agent companies? Can you price higher than OpenAI? What is needed to achieve premium pricing?

Witness the strategies shaping the future of B2B SaaS with exclusive access to our 5 most essential recent webinars—with our VIP decks now available for download. These sessions bring together the latest thinking from the industry’s top pricing and monetization experts, covering everything from Q1 2025’s biggest pricing shifts and the evolution of agent-based packaging, to actionable frameworks for AI pricing, mid-year trend analysis, and what’s really happening in B2B SaaS monetization.

Key points from the VIP Show’s conversation with Olge Kurtoglu.:

• Value Based Wins over Cost Plus

• Value is a moving target

• Value alignment is critical

Three key actions to take now are identified.

VIP is for Value Innovation and Pricing.

Vibe coding is rewiring innovation. One can now quickly code applications using prompts and get usable code. This requires a lot of thought, but it is different from the thought that goes into writing code or doing UI design. These vibe coded applications and agents are also able to propose their own packaging and pricing. Today they do a bad job at this, even when the person doing the prompting knows a lot about packaging and pricing. But this will change. In the near future, will applications package and price themself?

Karen Chiang is hosting Ibbaka’s new VIP (Value Innovation and Pricing) series. In this podcast and vodcast series Karen will have conversations with the key people shaping value based strategies. This is a great opportunity to learn from a community of passionate experts.

AI advances through benchmarking. The major LLMs are systematically benchmarked as they are released and compete to appear at the top of the leaderboard. When developing FinAI Intercom fought hard to improve on its own benchmarking. Is there a general approach we can take to benchmarking AI agents for business? Will value models become the standard frame for benchmarking AI agents?

Sales depends on understanding what your customer values. You need to know how you create value and who you create value for. Traditional market surveys are no longer enough to understand value in rapidly changing markets. Instead, one needs to build a system and culture of continuous value: understand, communicate, deliver, document and capture as a continuous process.

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?

While 20-25% of B2B technology deals are lost due to price, a staggering 81% of buyers actually prioritize value, performance, and solution fit over cost. Even more striking, 74% of deals are won by the vendor who first paints a compelling vision of value. Discover how mapping your sales process to the buyer’s journey, tailoring growth models to customer engagement, crafting clear and measurable value propositions, and embracing value-based pricing can build trust and accelerate sales.