THE SAAS GROSS MARGIN INVERSION UNDER AGENTIC WORKLOADS
Unit Economics of a $50/Seat/Month SaaS Application Across Token Consumption Tiers
TIER 1: LIGHT / CHAT
5 Queries / Day
300k Tokens / Month
Subscription Rev: $50.00
Base Cloud COGS: $5.00
LLM Compute: $0.41
TOTAL COGS: $5.41
GROSS PROFIT: $44.59
89.2% MARGIN
Healthy Software Unit Math
TIER 2: AGENTIC LOOPS
3 Workflows / Day
22.5M Tokens / Month
Subscription Rev: $50.00
Base Cloud COGS: $5.00
LLM Compute: $33.75
TOTAL COGS: $38.75
GROSS PROFIT: $11.25
22.5% MARGIN
Severe Margin Compression
TIER 3: AUTONOMOUS AGENT
Continuous Execution
50M Tokens / Month
Subscription Rev: $50.00
Base Cloud COGS: $5.00
LLM Compute: $75.00
TOTAL COGS: $80.00
GROSS PROFIT: -$30.00
-60.0% MARGIN
FLAT SEAT INVERSION