Agent Economy Needs a New Business Model: Pass-Through Inference Pricing Will Be a Race to the Bottom
_AustinCalvert_ · x · 2026-10-10
Mignano lays out an argument about how the internet's business model must evolve for the agent era:
- Consumers will increasingly outsource tasks to agents that execute them around the clock, and every task consumes inference spend.
- The obvious way to cover these costs is passing them through via subscriptions or pay-per-credit — but as inference costs keep falling, pass-through pricing gets commoditized into a race to the bottom and can't sustain margins.
- The natural iteration is outcome-based pricing: customers pay agents only when they achieve goals, like successfully booking an appointment.
His conclusion: the internet is headed toward a new business model nobody has fully figured out yet, and startups and incumbents alike will be forced beyond simple cost pass-through.
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