AI drives surge in complex software pricing models

Solvimon says companies are adopting more complex pricing models as AI changes how software is billed. According to the billing platform, usage-based charges have risen sevenfold since 2025.

Its data points to a shift away from flat monthly fees and seat-based pricing towards combinations of subscriptions and consumption-based charges. The fastest-growing software and AI businesses now use nearly five pricing structures on average, up from three over the past year.

That shift is putting pressure on finance teams as AI products create value in ways that do not fit neatly into older billing systems. Businesses are trying to bill for credits, tokens, usage and outcome-based measures alongside standard subscriptions, increasing the risk of invoicing errors and missed revenue.

A Bain & Company analysis of more than 30 established SaaS vendors found that 65% have already introduced hybrid pricing, adding AI usage or outcome metrics to traditional seat-based models. Solvimon argues that the spread of these structures is making billing one of the more fragile parts of the revenue cycle for companies with expanding product lines and more tailored commercial contracts.

Research from MGI found that SaaS companies can lose between 1% and 5% of annual recurring revenue each year through billing leakage caused by errors that repeat in each billing cycle until detected. For chief financial officers, that is bringing greater scrutiny to systems once treated as back-office tools rather than strategic infrastructure.

Founded in 2022 by former Adyen executives Kim Verkooij and Etienne Gerts, Solvimon sells software for pricing logic, quote management, invoicing, payment collection and revenue recognition. It has also seen an increase in usage-based billing events as it adds customers including Duna, Gigs and Reson8Labs.

Its customer list also includes Truelayer, Yuno, Seon, Hawk.ai and Montonio. These clients are typically businesses with annual recurring revenue between USD $5 million and USD $100 million that have moved beyond basic subscription billing.

Billing strain

The issue has become more visible as AI services move into mainstream commercial software. Charging by user made sense when software access was closely tied to headcount. AI tools, however, can be consumed based on compute use, transaction volume or the number of generated outputs.

Companies are responding by layering several charging methods into a single contract. That can help protect margins, but it also adds operational complexity as finance teams reconcile usage data, contract terms and invoices across multiple entities and product lines.

"At Adyen, we processed almost a trillion euros a year. Billing was the system that could break everything else. When we saw AI companies hitting the same wall with hybrid pricing, multiple entities, and enterprise contracts that limit pricing flexibility, we knew what needed to be built. Pricing models are more complex because of AI and you can no longer price on a per seat basis as the risk of revenue leakage grows from unbilled usage to misconfigured contracts. That's why we're building accurate, real-time billing infrastructure to ensure companies capture every euro or dollar of earned revenue," said Kim Verkooij, co-founder and chief executive officer of Solvimon.

The remarks reflect a broader shift in software economics. AI features often introduce variable costs because providers must pay for infrastructure such as graphics processing, model inference and data processing, making it harder to absorb those charges within a fixed monthly subscription.

Customer cases

One of Solvimon's newer customers is Reson8, which sells speech recognition tools to sectors including healthcare and finance. The company bills customers by the minute and has introduced credit-based pricing across different workloads, creating a direct link between product use and revenue collection.

"When you're running your own GPU cluster and inference stack, and selling speech by the minute, usage-based billing is core to how you operate. As we rolled out credit-based pricing across different workload types, we needed a system that could evolve alongside the product. Solvimon ensures every minute of usage is tracked and revenue is captured correctly from the start," said Raoul Ritter, co-founder and chief executive officer of Reson8.

Investors are also watching the sector closely as software vendors seek to preserve revenue quality while changing how they charge customers. Solvimon is backed by Northzone, which says billing infrastructure is becoming more important as AI and SaaS groups expand internationally and add more products.

"Solvimon is now expanding globally, entering its next phase of growth with proven infrastructure, a validated customer base and expanding pipeline for AI and SaaS companies. With sights on wider European and US expansion, the company is scaling at a moment when the pressure to modernise billing has never been greater and reflects how urgently CFOs and business leaders need to modernise their billing infrastructure. We believe it is solving one of the most important infrastructure and monetisation challenges enterprises will face in this decade," said Esen.