The AI pricing paradox: AI PCs might be the answer to spiralling cloud costs for some, but that doesn't mean cloud computing's days are numbered

AI PCs will bring pricing predictability, but cloud computing remains essential

by · TechRadar

Features By Craig Hale Published 27 July 2026

(Image credit: Getty Images)

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Now that AI vendors have us hooked and using generative and agentic tools, pricing models are shifting. Subscriptions are no longer loss-making models designed to attract experimental customers, because they now need to serve a much more important purpose – make back money.

How this might look is still largely being figured out, but already we're seeing major software vendors ditch per-seat pricing in favor of token consumption or outcomes.

What this is likely to mean for corporate and enterprise customers is that AI is about to become a whole lot more expensive – but it's not all bad news because these companies also have the opportunity to gain more control over certain spends.

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Step forward the AI PC, which is increasingly capable of running small models locally and handling basic and even some mid-level generative tasks without ever needing to spend a cent in the cloud. A few months ago, my social media was even filled with consumers and knowledge workers grabbing Mac minis to run Openclaw's AI agent locally.

A brief overview of how the consumption-based model could look

Shashi Upadhyay, Zendesk's President for Products, Engineering and AI, explained the reason behind the shift we're seeing in pricing models – traditional metrics are becoming less relevant and new metrics are emerging. "We believe software value should align directly with customer success, not headcount," he told me in an interview.

Upadhyay also criticized per-seat models for charging customers for raw AI, whether their problem gets solved or not. But a shift to outcome-based pricing relies on the vendor and customer agreeing "on the exact result that triggers payment."

On the surface, it looks like this could be a variable that might differ on a vendor-by-vendor basis, but thinking about it more deeply, customers would ultimately be able to determine their own meaningful outcome, meaning that they only ever pay for success and never pay for failures.

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