Saas business models were much more insulated from price competitiveness than tokens are.

· Bits and Bobs 10/12/26
  • Saas business models were much more insulated from price competitiveness than tokens are.
    • Saas business models are only nominally about the value of the software.
      • Providing the software has a marginal cost of zero.
      • The value accrues for charging a toll on users having access to their own data.
    • Token-based businesses have no durable state.
    • You only have to pay at the instant you need the token.
    • If there are multiple providers of that token, you can pick the cheapest one.
    • That can happen for example with reseller agreements.
    • Perhaps DataBricks buys a committed floor of number of tokens to resell from Anthropic.
    • If DataBricks is demand constrained for the tokens, they may choose to sell them at a nominal loss to sweeten the value of their overall product, thus undercutting Anthropic.

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