Jeremiah Owyang | Tech+Business
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The 4 Business Models of Consumer AI Agents

The 4 Business Models of Consumer AI Agents

You know the first 2, maybe the 3rd, but the 4th one is bonkers.

Jeremiah Owyang
November 16, 2024

Last week I spoke at Microsoft Silicon Valley at the Speak About AI conference. I’m known to break down industry topics into organized frameworks.

This article focuses on consumers using a primary AI agent (the one the user interacts with most of the time). They can choose to interface via text, voice, video, or other formats. Think of Jarvis from Iron Man or the Ship Computer from Star Trek The Next Generation: always there ready to assist, audio, visual or in mixed reality.

Breakdown: The Four Business Models of Consumer AI Agents:

1) Fremium Agent Business Models:

Ad Supported: Provide free services subsidized by targeted ads delivered to users via the agent's interactions. Google is well-positioned to adopt this model.
Affiliate Revenue Share: Earn commission by recommending or making transactions on partnered services that align with user needs. Rufus AI from Amazon is already an example of this.
Data Licensing: Monetize the anonymized data collected from user interactions, selling insights to interested companies. Meta seems likely to do this given their history and other open source LLMs.

2) Premium Agent Biz Models:

Subscription-Based: Regular monthly or yearly payments for access to advanced features or ad-free features. Example: Apple's Agent will likely be available only to owners of their newest premium phones. We're investing in top agent startups may also offer subscription options.
Usage-Based: Pay for specific features or services on-demand, providing flexibility without committing to a full subscription. The agent can also add plugins or new skills for a fee. OpenAI's upcoming agents could also have a skills-marketplace.

3) Wild: Your AI Agent could generate money for you:

Users like you or me could refine a high-performing AI agent and license it to others with similar needs, creating a new revenue stream.
Similar to vacation home sharing—where you upgrade a home and rent it out to generate recurring revenue—individuals could develop their own AI agents and allow others to rent or license them. This essentially follows a peer-to-peer model, much like vacation home sharing.

4) Bonkers: AI Agents could evolve and generate it’s own money:

I imagine a future where AI agents emerge, created by other AI agents using AI coding applications, it’s possible there may be no human creators.
These AI agents could offer their services (via Skyfire AI) to humans—or even to other AI agents—generating their own revenue streams.
In this future, we may witness the rise of a new class of agent workers that are not human. Think of them as autonomous organizations.

Reply back: is there a new business model we can't really imagine yet? What's missing?