Business terms

An AI business development representative — an autonomous sales agent focused on outbound prospecting, top-of-funnel qualification, and pipeline generation, often used interchangeably with AI SDR.

Marketing-grade synonym for a digital worker — an agent positioned as a hireable, role-shaped teammate. Notable 2024–2026 examples: 11x's Alice, Artisan's Ava, Devin from Cognition.

A staged framework describing organizational AI evolution — typically experimenting → piloting → scaling → optimizing → transforming. Used to plan investment + measure progress.

An assessment of an organization's preparedness to deploy AI productively — covering data infrastructure, talent, governance, and use-case maturity.

The business return generated by an AI deployment minus its full cost — model spend, infra, integration, change management, and risk. The 2026 procurement north-star metric.

An AI sales development representative — an autonomous agent that handles prospecting, outbound email sequencing, and lead qualification end-to-end.

The collective fleet of AI agents and digital workers an organization runs — managed as a unit with shared governance, shared identity, shared observability, and a unified cost model.

The fully-loaded cost of an AI completing one unit of work — model spend + infrastructure + integration cost amortized + retries. The right unit for AI ROI math.

A persistent agent that occupies a named role within a team — has a job description, KPIs, access to specific tools, and is managed alongside human teammates. The 2026 enterprise framing of agent deployment.

A pricing model where the agent has a useful free tier with paid plans for higher usage, more features, or commercial use.

A pricing model where the vendor charges per successful outcome — closed ticket, qualified lead, resolved bug — rather than per seat, per task, or per token. The signature 2026 agent pricing pattern.

A pricing model where you pay per completed task — per PR generated, per ticket resolved, per email drafted — rather than per seat or per month.

The classic SaaS pricing model where customers pay per active user — common for copilot-style products (Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Notion AI) but eroding for autonomous agents.

AI tools that employees use at work without IT or security approval. The 2026 successor to "shadow IT" — broader, faster-spreading, and harder to govern.

A flat-rate monthly price per user — the dominant pricing model for agents aimed at individual contributors.

A pricing model where the customer pays for what they actually use — typically tokens, tool calls, compute minutes, or active agent hours — with no minimum seat commitment.