AI Monetization in 2025
Steven Forth is CEO of Ibbaka. Connect on LinkedIn
The second edition of Ibbaka’s AI Monetization report is now available: “AI Monetization in 2025.”
The report is based on a survey of more than 300 companies building AI applications for B2B or enhancing their existing applications with AI.
On Thursday January 23 at 11:00 AM Eastern (8:00 AM Pacific / 5:00 PM Paris) we will have a webinar with value and pricing experts Mark Stiving (host of the essential Impact Pricing Podcast) and Michael Mansard from Zuora. They will ask their questions about the report and draw out the trends that will shape value, packaging, and pricing in 2025.
Register for the webinar here.
Here are the key Insights from the report:
Customer success agents are the killer app for B2B AI with more than 50% of respondents saying they are adopting
Four packaging and monetization are coalescing: agents, co-pilots, generators, and service as software - communicating value and pricing will be easiest within one of these patterns
Sustaining and disruptive applications are both getting traction but sustaining innovations dominate - sustaining innovations generally use conventional pricing (like per user) and act by improving existing value drivers
Flexible pricing models are winning - this could be some form of outcome-based pricing like Intercom or transferable credits like Box
And the recommendations:
Be clear on your strategy - sustaining innovation or disruptive innovation
Use one of the core patterns: Agent, Co-pilot, Generator, Service as Software
Pay attention to pricing
For sustaining innovation use value based pricing
For disruptive innovation adopt generative pricing
Focus on value (and use a value model)
For sustaining innovation keep existing value drivers
For disruptive innovation create new value drivers
Consider using open-source models and models from Hugging Face. The world is bigger than just OpenAI, Anthropic, and so on. Explore collaboration opportunities with open-source communities and local universities as these are currently underused
The report includes mini case studies of Salesforce Agentforce, Canva, BoxAI, Intercom and Zendesk.
It goes deep on pricing methodology, pricing metrics, packaging patterns and B2B SaaS verticals with more than 30 figures showing what the data says.
Table from the Ibbaka AI Monetization in 2025 report.
The survey data was clustered using Ibbaka’s proprietary Geode software and three clusters were found.
