Per-seat pricing made sense when more employees meant more people needed access to the software. But if one AI agent can perform work that previously required several users, the connection between seats and value becomes much weaker.
I don’t think per-seat pricing will disappear overnight, especially for collaboration and enterprise tools. But I do think hybrid, usage-based, and outcome-based models will become much more important. The big shift is from charging for access to charging for value and work completed.