[HN]score: 0.26
The current AI pricing was always going to go away
May 22, 2026
The central argument: AI pricing subsidies are ending as inference costs fail to drop fast enough to justify flat-rate bundling. Evidence includes Microsoft canceling Claude Code licenses, Uber exhausting its 2026 AI budget in four months, and GitHub dropping flat-rate plans. Practitioners building AI-dependent products should reprice assumptions around inference cost absorption now.