Business terms
Pricing models, contracts, and the commercial side of agents.
- ๐ผBusinessAI BDR
An AI business development representative โ an autonomous sales agent focused on outbound prospecting, top-of-funnel qualification, and pipeline generation, often used interchangeably with AI SDR.
- ๐ผBusinessAI employee
Marketing-grade synonym for a digital worker โ an agent positioned as a hireable, role-shaped teammate. Notable 2024โ2026 examples: 11x's Alice, Artisan's Ava, Devin from Cognition.
- ๐ผBusinessAI maturity model
A staged framework describing organizational AI evolution โ typically experimenting โ piloting โ scaling โ optimizing โ transforming. Used to plan investment + measure progress.
- ๐ผBusinessAI readiness
An assessment of an organization's preparedness to deploy AI productively โ covering data infrastructure, talent, governance, and use-case maturity.
- ๐ผBusinessAI ROI
The business return generated by an AI deployment minus its full cost โ model spend, infra, integration, change management, and risk. The 2026 procurement north-star metric.
- ๐ผBusinessAI SDR
An AI sales development representative โ an autonomous agent that handles prospecting, outbound email sequencing, and lead qualification end-to-end.
- ๐ผBusinessAI workforce
The collective fleet of AI agents and digital workers an organization runs โ managed as a unit with shared governance, shared identity, shared observability, and a unified cost model.
- ๐ผBusinessCost per task
The fully-loaded cost of an AI completing one unit of work โ model spend + infrastructure + integration cost amortized + retries. The right unit for AI ROI math.
- ๐ผBusinessDigital worker
A persistent agent that occupies a named role within a team โ has a job description, KPIs, access to specific tools, and is managed alongside human teammates. The 2026 enterprise framing of agent deployment.
- ๐ผBusinessFreemium
A pricing model where the agent has a useful free tier with paid plans for higher usage, more features, or commercial use.
- ๐ผBusinessOutcome-based pricing
A pricing model where the vendor charges per successful outcome โ closed ticket, qualified lead, resolved bug โ rather than per seat, per task, or per token. The signature 2026 agent pricing pattern.
- ๐ผBusinessPer-task pricing
A pricing model where you pay per completed task โ per PR generated, per ticket resolved, per email drafted โ rather than per seat or per month.
- ๐ผBusinessSeat-based pricing
The classic SaaS pricing model where customers pay per active user โ common for copilot-style products (Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Notion AI) but eroding for autonomous agents.
- ๐ผBusinessShadow AI
AI tools that employees use at work without IT or security approval. The 2026 successor to "shadow IT" โ broader, faster-spreading, and harder to govern.
- ๐ผBusinessSubscription pricing
A flat-rate monthly price per user โ the dominant pricing model for agents aimed at individual contributors.
- ๐ผBusinessUsage-based pricing
A pricing model where the customer pays for what they actually use โ typically tokens, tool calls, compute minutes, or active agent hours โ with no minimum seat commitment.