AI Costs Are KILLING SaaS Companies! Here's The Way Out #shorts

Name: AI Costs Are KILLING SaaS Companies! Here's The Way Out #shorts
Uploaded: 2026-02-09T10:27:26+00:00
Duration: 11 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: In this short dialogue, two speakers discuss the rapidly rising token inference costs associated with AI models and how these expenses are jeopardizing…

9 Feb 2026 · 0 min

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In this short dialogue, two speakers discuss the rapidly rising token inference costs associated with AI models and how these expenses are jeopardizing the economics of SaaS businesses. Speaker B expresses deep concern that even well‑funded B2B companies—citing examples like Canva, Gamma, and emerging AI agent vendors—cannot afford the token burn required to build competitive AI‑driven products, fearing this could be the final nail in the coffin for SaaS growth. Speaker A acknowledges the dilemma: without additional capital, companies cannot sustain the high inference spend, yet cutting spend undermines product competitiveness. The conversation raises the critical question of whether a strategic “way out” exists for SaaS firms facing unsustainable AI costs.

This war escalating with a level of token intensity that you just can't keep up at. And I acknowledge that at the app level, as I say, a couple of my companies are wrestling with those issues right now.
Yeah, I'm just— I'm honestly worried. We talk about, is SaaS dead or what's going on? I worry this is the next final act, is that you checked out, you did all the right things, right? I did everything you told me to do. You did it. You did. You're not growing 0%. Your customers don't hate you. You built an agent. And the final nail in the coffin is we just can't afford the inference. We just can't build a competitive product. We can't. And even, you know, earlier on this podcast, in essence, even Canva, which will be one of the great IPOs, great— even Cliff teased at that. I could build Gamma, but I can't, I can't burn the way Gamma burns those tokens. Now maybe he'd say something different today, but it was the same point that echoed in my head that now we're seeing across boardrooms, across B2B companies. I think it's the final nail. Is there a way out though?
If you can't raise the money to compete, but you can't not spend.
Well, Rory hit the way out, the way out. There is a simple way out, uh, which is you build an epically good agent. Typically one, maybe that's, let's say your product's $5,000 a year, $10,000 a year, and you're able to charge $20,000 a month for your agent, $10,000 a month because it replaces 20 people. It's that good. It's not pretend that good. It's not that good on a sales pitch. It's literally so good that the ROI is measured in weeks. Right? That's your way out. But the problem is, it— like, you— a lot of B2B companies, they're, they're just struggling to get parity. The bar is so high. And so, but that's the answer. But it's exhausting because it was so much work just to get here, to get to profitability, to get to agent. Now you have to beat the agent that Open Evidence, Lagora, Harvey, who— whoever we're going to talk about— repli— you have to have a better agent than them to earn the $20 grand a month.