Every AI contract you sign assumes a pricing unit the market hasn’t settled on. The vendors coping best stopped betting on one.
TL;DR: Salesforce has priced one AI product four ways since May 2025, and the market splits between charging for effort (tokens), output, and outcomes (all-you-can-eat wasn’t sustainable after all). The vendors coping best sell a currency instead: credits whose exchange rate they control, so the next change happens in a rate table. Fund usage data and the currency layer; defer billing, contracts, and comp tied to one unit. Your customer’s budget, built on your unit, is what you can never migrate. Output or outcome pricing leaves rising inference costs on your P&L, and not in a good way. Freeze the exchange rate for each contract term so customers can budget. Bill this year’s usage through two candidate units, on paper, and record what breaks.
