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Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing

simonwillison.net

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Re: Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing

#71

Post by ofjcihen »

infecto wrote: post #62
CharlieDigital wrote: post #4

$1500/mo is $18,000/seat/annum. Maybe Microsoft and Nvidia are on to something. 128 GB machines that can run local LLMs are a bargain even if priced $5-8k. Yes, tok/s is not quite there, but that's probably OK since the bottleneck really isn't the code; it's WTF did Uber build with all of that spend? How did it meaningfully impact their revenue in a positive direction?

I am wondering more and more if this becomes true as these smaller models take off. I might be old fashioned but I have yet to crack the workflows some of the hype people spout like Claude codes Boris where he and others talk about running hundreds of agents overnight. I have still found the sweet spot for me is using LLMs but I am still in the drivers seat.

Running hundreds of agents overnight is almost certainly 99 percent waste.

Re: Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing

#72

Post by ofjcihen »

simonw wrote: post #67
analognoise wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18k/yr? None of the LLMs generate anything like that in value!

I'm definitely getting that much value out of Claude Code and Copilot.

Can you share some examples that you would say justify that price? Not a gotcha, I’m genuinely curious where you’re seeing a return at that level.

Re: Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing

#73

Post by zozbot234 »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #4

$1500/mo is $18,000/seat/annum. Maybe Microsoft and Nvidia are on to something. 128 GB machines that can run local LLMs are a bargain even if priced $5-8k. Yes, tok/s is not quite there, but that's probably OK since the bottleneck really isn't the code; it's WTF did Uber build with all of that spend? How did it meaningfully impact their revenue in a positive direction?

I agree on the basic point, but running $1500/mo's worth of SOTA local AI is non-trivial already, and that's a figure for a single seat. That's equivalent to generating at least 20 tok/s on a 24/7 basis, in fact probably quite a bit more than that (because open-weight models are vastly cheaper than proprietary ones even when served from reputable Western providers - reaching the same spend would take around 100 tok/s or more, which is well within datacenter hardware territory).

You could probably reach the former figure on a prosumer platform but only for very special workloads. If you spend a lot of time on prefill (which is common for agentic workloads) the outlook is even worse since that's a significant constraint for any on-prem AI.

Re: Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing

#74

Post by simonw »

ofjcihen wrote: post #72
simonw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm definitely getting that much value out of Claude Code and Copilot.

Can you share some examples that you would say justify that price? Not a gotcha, I’m genuinely curious where you’re seeing a return at that level.

I've written tens of thousands of lines of tested, working code that I would not have written otherwise, and that code is useful to me.

I effectively get to operate at the rate of a small team of engineers - I know that because I've managed small teams of engineers in the past.

Re: Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing

#75

Post by mrweasel »

dkdcdev wrote: post #16
CharlieDigital wrote: post #4

$1500/mo is $18,000/seat/annum. Maybe Microsoft and Nvidia are on to something. 128 GB machines that can run local LLMs are a bargain even if priced $5-8k. Yes, tok/s is not quite there, but that's probably OK since the bottleneck really isn't the code; it's WTF did Uber build with all of that spend? How did it meaningfully impact their revenue in a positive direction?

at their scale they could also just run a large on-premise or rented (basically still cloud, but cheaper) GPU cluster and run through that. fixed costs, even license a SOTA model’s weights if you’d like

The problem isn't really Uber, Microsoft or Nvidia, it's all the smaller none IT companies that also have developers on staff. They are screwed. $1500 per seat per month is just way to expensive, but they also can't afford to build and maintain their own on-premise solution. If Microsoft can't afford to run CoPilot for their own developer, what chance does any of their customers stand?

If the large, well founded IT companies in the world believes the current AI cost is to high, then Anthropic, OpenAI and CoPilot have no actual customer base. AI is then relegated to very profitable niche business, but that can't fund the R&D for the models.

Re: Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing

#76

Post by ofjcihen »

simonw wrote: post #74
ofjcihen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share some examples that you would say justify that price? Not a gotcha, I’m genuinely curious where you’re seeing a return at that level.

I've written tens of thousands of lines of tested, working code that I would not have written otherwise, and that code is useful to me. I effectively get to operate at the rate of a small team of engineers - I know that because I've managed small teams of engineers in the past.

> that I would not have written otherwise

I think this is the part I struggle with. The code I write makes me money or is a way of teaching me something, both of which are reasons that I would write the code regardless.

I don’t think I have any projects in mind that I’d be willing to spend half of a car on that I also wouldn’t have written myself.

Obviously just a personal take though. I’m glad you get the usage you want out of it.

Re: Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing

#77

Post by nonethewiser »

jvanderbot wrote: post #60
nonethewiser wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XP? I can see the argument for enterprise support but in that case the latest windows OS is going to be virtually free and I dont know if MS and Dell etc. would even support an XP machine. Might even be required for hardware. If no enterprise support wouldnt Linux make a lot more sense? I get that if it's offline the security downside of XP doesnt matter, and I assume XP is free, but being free doesnt really seem tha…

"Windows XP+Dell" should have been in quotes. It's similar to the way enterprise productivity software was developed, packaged co-designed with hardware, and sold on an 18mo upgrade cycle assumption. It's not literally windows xp.

Oh gotcha. Yeah that's an interesting idea.

Re: Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing

#78

Post by simonw »

ofjcihen wrote: post #76
simonw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've written tens of thousands of lines of tested, working code that I would not have written otherwise, and that code is useful to me. I effectively get to operate at the rate of a small team of engineers - I know that because I've managed small teams of engineers in the past.

> that I would not have written otherwise I think this is the part I struggle with. The code I write makes me money or is a way of teaching me something, both of which are reasons that I would write the code regardless. I don’t think I have any projects in mind that I’d be willing to spend half of a car on that I also wouldn’t have written myself. Obviously just a personal take though. I’m glad you get the usage you…

My "job" is building open source software for data journalism (and anyone else who needs the tools data journalists need, which is pretty much everyone else). I can build more of those tools, and better, in exchange for a fraction of the cost it would take to hire a team to help.

Re: Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing

#79

Post by CharlieDigital »

infecto wrote: post #62
CharlieDigital wrote: post #4

$1500/mo is $18,000/seat/annum. Maybe Microsoft and Nvidia are on to something. 128 GB machines that can run local LLMs are a bargain even if priced $5-8k. Yes, tok/s is not quite there, but that's probably OK since the bottleneck really isn't the code; it's WTF did Uber build with all of that spend? How did it meaningfully impact their revenue in a positive direction?

I am wondering more and more if this becomes true as these smaller models take off. I might be old fashioned but I have yet to crack the workflows some of the hype people spout like Claude codes Boris where he and others talk about running hundreds of agents overnight. I have still found the sweet spot for me is using LLMs but I am still in the drivers seat.

That's because for some of these folks, the cost of the tokens doesn't have to match the value of the output; the hype from the story is all they need.

Normal people have to produce something of value from that spend. So starting 100 agents and then waking up to something cool but useless just means you spent a few thousand dollars and created nothing of value............

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