The most expensive part of AI coding is no longer the model. It is the software wrapped around it, and enterprises have started to notice.
The immediate fight is over price. Cursor, the AI coding tool SpaceX has agreed to buy for $60bn, moved most customers to usage-based billing last year. The renewal bills are now landing hard, The Information reported.
The renewal shock
One IT consulting firm paid Cursor about $200,000 for 800 licences in the year to May. At renewal, Cursor asked for roughly $1.5m for the same usage. The firm “played hard ball” and got it down to $250,000. Others tell similar stories. The biopharma group Sanofi and the security vendor Druva both faced renewals about five times higher than last year.
“I may not renew with Cursor,” Sanofi’s chief digital officer Emmanuel Frenehard told The Information. “I get a better deal with Claude Code.”
