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It’s pretty clear to me that the internet is headed toward a new business model that we may not have figured out yet. Consumers will incre by eddie · twitter.com It’s pretty clear to me that the internet is headed toward a new business model that we may not have figured out yet. Consumers will increasingly outsource tasks to agents, and agents will work around the clock to execute them on their behalf. These tasks require inference spend. The most obvious way to cover these costs is by passing them through to the user. Users pay a monthly subscription or simply pay for credits that get deducted as inference gets spent. But with the cost of inference dropping over time, this will ultimately be a race to the bottom. Pass-through pricing will get commoditized and won’t be able to sustain margins. So startups and incumbents will have no choice but to offer a different business model. Paying for task-based outcomes is an obvious iteration. You can imagine customers paying agents when they achieve certain goals, such as successfully booking an appointment or executing a refund the user wouldn’t have taken care of on their own. But most tasks aren't worth paying for one at a time. The most scaled business models on the internet let everyone participate, even when they can't pay directly. This is why advertising dominated as the primary business model of the past 30 years. Incumbents will subsidize usage dramatically over the next few years to onboard as many customers as possible. We’re already seeing this with Muse. But the question is, how will this work get paid for long-term? Can agents adopt a form of advertising that covers the cost? Or do we need a completely new model where the few big paid outcomes subsidize everyone else's usage? We may be headed toward a new world of haves and have nots. Or a world of abundance where everyone can get anything done at any time for free.