The subsidy game
AI token pricing is artificially low right now. OpenAI, Anthropic, and other frontier labs are running the Uber playbook: price below cost, lock in workflows, raise prices later. OpenAI pulls $20B in revenue but has committed to spending $600B on infrastructure over four years. That gap gets covered by venture capital until your dependencies are locked in.
Anthropic's recent price increases are the signal. Token costs will correct, and when they do, your sales stack economics change.
ANZ startups are exposed
ANZ businesses are planning to spend a median of $15M on generative AI, versus $12.5M globally. That is 20% higher spend in a smaller market. The ANZ AI platform market is growing at 26.8% CAGR, but 69% of businesses say they are not moving fast enough, fearing competitive disadvantage.
The infrastructure layer (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) controls roughly 80% of IaaS revenue in the region. Startups cannot build their own GPU capacity, so they rent. When token prices spike, margins evaporate.
What this means for sales teams
If your sales stack runs on AI, your SDR tools, CRM enrichment, or AI sales agents, stress-test your unit economics at 10x current token costs. Most vendors have not priced in the correction. When it hits, your per-rep costs could double or triple overnight.
Large enterprises (75.62% of ANZ cloud spend) can absorb the hit. Startups cannot. If your sales automation depends on cheap API calls, you are building on subsidised infrastructure. The playbook: lock in dependencies now, raise prices later.
The math
Uber fares rose 94% post-subsidy. AI tokens will correct too. OpenAI's revenue-to-spend ratio does not close without massive price increases. When that happens, your AI-powered sales tools get expensive fast.
AWS is hiring ANZ AI sales leadership to drive agentic AI adoption in enterprises. That is not altruism, it is land grab. Once workflows are embedded, switching costs are prohibitive.
Bottom line
If your sales stack depends on AI APIs, model the cost at 10x. If the unit economics break, your sales team's productivity gains evaporate. The subsidy is temporary. The lock-in is permanent.