ai inference economics

This tag explores ai inference economics through Microsoft's changing approach to enterprise AI pricing and model costs. Current coverage focuses on Copilot Cowork, an autonomous Microsoft 365 agent moving from traditional per-seat billing toward usage-based charges during its broader 2026 rollout. It also examines Microsoft's reported consideration of an Azure-hosted, fine-tuned DeepSeek V4 option to reduce inference costs. Together, these developments highlight the practical tension between selling AI as software and managing it as metered cloud infrastructure, including how enterprises may evaluate autonomous AI workloads, pricing, and compute consumption. The topic is especially relevant to organizations planning budgets for expanding AI use.