Microsoft recently announced major pricing changes for GitHub Copilot — changes that were drastic enough that a Reddit user said their company has started calling it the Tokenpocalypse.
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed what those changes might mean for the larger AI ecosystem. After all, as Anthropic and other big AI companies plan to go public, leading to awkward questions about profitability, we’re likely to see similar price increases for other AI products.
“Can these AI labs collapse that cost [and] progress the tech enough in a way that it eventually meets in the middle with customers’ appetite for spending?” Sean wondered.
Kirsten, meanwhile, suggested that this also reflects “how quickly things are moving.” In just a few months, companies became obsessed with “tokenmaxxxing,” then turned against it due to the high costs. So as AI companies write their IPO filings, she asked, “How do you even write these risks in, because they are evolving before our eyes?”
Keep reading for a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
