
Every major AI provider is moving toward usage-based and credit pricing: pay per token, pay per generation, pay per call. Right now, access is generous because the entire industry is still in a land grab phase, and acquiring users and market share matters more than margin. That phase doesn't last.
Most founders rush the wrong thing. They rush the launch, cut corners on the systems underneath it, then end up rebuilding everything later once real usage and real costs actually show up.
What I'm doing right now isn't rushing to ship more tools. It's rushing to build the infrastructure, deployment pipelines, reusable backend scaffolds, and automated workflows, while every AI call is still cheap enough to iterate on freely without thinking twice about cost.
Infrastructure built cheap today compounds. Infrastructure you're forced to build later, under tighter margins, doesn't have the same runway.
Rush the foundation, not the launch.
Anyone else building with this timing in mind, or is this overthinking a pricing shift that might not even be that dramatic?