👾 Monetize conference 2026, the one where Scott Woody (@l3amm) took us on an "alien autopsy" of today's leading AI companies—those that are operating in ways alien to their predecessors. From human- and machine-legible pricing to finance's new mandate of proving AI value both internally and externally, there were five major shifts that came up throughout the conference. Read today's blog post from James Brown to get the conference highlights and see some of our speakers live. Read today's post: stripe.com/blog/economics-of…

🎬 That's a wrap on Monetize 2026. Huge thank you to everyone who joined us to make this a memorable and hugely worthwhile event. The conversations at Monetize are next level thanks to everyone who came to listen, learn, and share their own learnings about how you're tackling monetization in this current age. Keep an eye out for more about the talks that were absolutely packed to the doors today. We can't wait to share more!

The energy from last night's kickoff here at Monetize . . . 😮‍💨 The group that's come together here in Sonoma is so unique and has so much varying expertise in what it takes to monetize in today's environment—there's truly nothing like it. 🙌 This morning's sessions are coming strong out of the gate, with a fireside on agents as the new economic actor, followed by sessions on scaling usage-based monetization, finance's new mandate (aka proving AI value), a masterclass on monetizing AI profitably, and how AI economics are being reshaped by open models. If you're here, we hope you've been making some great new connections, and if you're not, maybe join us next year?

📺 ICYMI 📺 Catch the replay of our most recent webinar: Monetization in Motion: Pricing Lessons for the Value Era with Alexandra Demopoulis and Andrew Garvin. What it covers: —Why pricing has shifted from a periodic reset to a continuous discipline —Which long-held pricing assumptions break under agentic and high-volume usage —How leading teams treat monetization as a growth lever —Practical moves you can make now, before you have the perfect model There's also a Q&A at the end with questions from your peers—worth a watch! youtube.com/watch?v=NuZbUjOr…

How do you give users the freedom to experiment with generative AI without collapsing gross margins under the weight of raw compute costs? 🤔 This latest Pricing Model Spotlight digs into how Leonardo.ai is skillfully monetizing generative media. Unlike early tools that relied on rigid, flat-rate pricing, Leonardo has engineered a sophisticated billing architecture that acts as an effective buffer between heavy infrastructure bills and user experience. A few standout tactics: → A hybrid token system (Fast, Rollover, and Top-Up) that gives creators flexibility while protecting predictable ARR → Dynamic metering based on actual GPU load and computational intensity, rather than flat, per-asset costs → Thoughtful margin guardrails where unlimited "Relaxed Mode" generation is saved for 1st-party models, while 3rd-party models always require hard tokens to cover external API costs Dive into the full breakdown of how Leonardo packages, prices, and scales into the enterprise on the blog: metronome.com/blog/pricing-m…

🎤📺 Live today at 9:30 AM PT: Monetization in Motion – Pricing Lessons for the Value Era. 📩 Save your seat! na2.hubs.ly/H071L3d0 The era of set-it-and-forget-it pricing is over. Join Andrew Garvin (Metronome) and Alexandra Demopoulos (Aiven) as they unpack the new rules of monetization in the AI and agentic era. This session will wrap up with a live Q&A, so come ready with your questions on usage-based pricing, infrastructure challenges, and shifting economics. 📩 Grab your seat to join us shortly! na2.hubs.ly/H071L3d0

🔂 Are you treating pricing as a one-time decision or a continuous discipline? Tomorrow at 9:30 AM PT, we're going live with Aiven's Head of Monetization, Alexandra Demopoulos, and Metronome's Co-Founder & COO, Andrew Garvin, for Monetization in Motion: Pricing Lessons for the Value Era. Join to learn: → Why pricing has shifted to a continuous discipline → Which pricing assumptions are breaking under agentic usage → How to treat monetization as a growth lever We're saving plenty of time for live audience Q&A, so bring your toughest pricing questions. 📩Grab your seat for tomorrow: na2.hubs.ly/H071L3d0

❓ Did you miss this live Q&A with Ville Lehto, VP of Strategy at Aiven, and Scott Woody, Metronome CEO? Flip through for a preview 👀 Ville digs into the real work behind pricing AI infrastructure: why early-stage AI pricing should never be outsourced, how cloud marketplaces are evolving for AI agents, and whether inference should be treated as a pass-through cost or a margin layer. No matter the monetization challenge you’re wrestling with, we hope this Q&A can be useful for you. Read the full Q&A here: na2.hubs.ly/H07bRlB0 Take a look, and if it sparks more questions, drop us a Q in the comments below. We'll see if we can get those questions answered!

🎒📚 It’s back-to-school time in the Bay, and we’re doing it summit style with our second-ever Monetize conference next month. Did you miss it last year? Request an invite: na2.hubs.ly/H06H2gy0 Working in the AI era means adapting to an onslaught of fast-coming changes. It also requires staying up on the latest strategies and challenges, and there’s never a better (or faster) way to learn than from hearing from others. Monetize is a special event that brings together leaders across product, engineering, and finance, all coming from some of the top companies in AI, SaaS, and InfraSaaS. You’ll want to make sure you’re taking notes in every session, and the after-session discussions are where you can swap learnings and hear from peers facing similar challenges. If these sound like the kind of conversations you need to join, request your invite here: na2.hubs.ly/H06H2gy0 We’re really looking forward to the discussions, and we hope you can join us!

Of all the current monetization challenges, infra providers are facing something unique: how do you price for value beyond the infrastructure itself, without commoditizing yourself through good-old pass-through pricing? And adding AI agents and open-source economics into the mix just makes the pricing calculus even more complex . . . Next Wednesday, August 19th, we’re unpacking this and other pricing challenges with Alexandra Demopoulos (Head of Monetization, Aiven) and Andrew Garvin (Co-Founder & COO, Metronome). With over a decade of experience pricing software and infrastructure—from enterprise storage to high-growth API products—Alexandra brings a ton of expertise in how to treat monetization as a living, adaptable system. 📩 Save your seat: na2.hubs.ly/H071L3d0

🍇 One month out! The countdown to Monetize 2026 in Sonoma is ticking. 🍇 Our thesis still stands: In the AI era, monetization is a core engineering and product discipline that can turn pricing into a growth engine. This September 9–10, leaders across product, engineering, and finance are coming together to tackle the toughest shifts in software business models: → Monetization intelligence: Moving beyond basic billing → Agent-led growth: Building systems for machine buyers →  AI margin pressures: Navigating cost volatility 📩 Spaces are limited to make sure the time value per minute is as high as we can make it. Request your invite here: na2.hubs.ly/H06H2gy0 Hope to see you there!

When your buyer isn’t a human, how do you price for value—and how does an agent buyer think about value? 🤖 The instincts that shaped software pricing for human buyers simply don’t transfer cleanly to agentic and high-volume usage. AI is rewriting the rules of monetization, and companies that fail to adapt their pricing infrastructure risk getting left behind. Join us next week on August 19th with Aiven's Head of Monetization, Alexandra Demopoulos, and Metronome's co-founder, Andrew Garvin, to discuss the realities of pricing in the AI era. 📩 Save your spot: na2.hubs.ly/H071L3d0

🤔 How are industry leaders like Aiven handling the breakdown of traditional SaaS monetization? Ville Lehto, VP of Strategy, breaks down the structural forces reshaping data infrastructure pricing, including enterprise customers pushing for BYOC, object storage compressing unit costs by 10x, and spiky AI agent workloads demanding active-second metering. 😮‍💨 As these market dynamics keep accelerating, success comes down to treating monetization as an agile, continuous capability rather than a static yearly project. Read the full breakdown here: metronome.com/blog/the-new-m…

If you're wrestling with how pricing should work today, and how it can be turned into an engine to fuel growth, Monetize 2026 is the place you need to be: na2.hubs.ly/H06H2gy0 As so many teams reach the same realization—that legacy billing systems just weren't built for the AI era—it's clear that being in the room where leaders and peers all solving the same challenges is more valuable than ever. This September, we’re bringing together leaders across product, engineering, and finance for sessions on: → Monetization intelligence: Moving beyond static billing to real-time value tracking → The AI margin crisis: How finance leaders are navigating token volatility → Agentic workflows: Pricing when your end user (or buyer) is an agent → GTM alignment: Unifying product, sales, and finance teams around dynamic pricing This is an invite-only event where leaders across the industry can come to swap notes and learn from the best. 📩 Spaces are limited, and you can request your invite here: na2.hubs.ly/H06H2gy0

Today's monetization is in constant motion, with AI and agentic workflows breaking old pricing models faster than most manual processes can handle. Sound familiar? Join us for the next webinar: na2.hubs.ly/H071L3d0 To keep up with the pace of this change, leading teams are treating monetization as a continuous growth lever. So how do you actually do this, in practice? On August 19th, join us for a live webinar with Alexandra Demopoulos, Head of Monetization at Aiven, and Metronome Co-Founder + COO Andrew Garvin as they unpack: → Why long-held pricing assumptions break under AI-driven usage → What changes when you treat monetization as a living system → How to adapt your pricing infrastructure for the agentic era 📩 Save your spot here: na2.hubs.ly/H071L3d0

"AI agents replacing human buyers" has entered the chat, and there’s even more to the story: How this shift is forcing a complete rewrite of SaaS monetization. The infrastructure companies winning today are treating pricing as a fluid capability that evolves right along with architectural shifts, extreme compute costs, and new buyer profiles (hello, agents 👋🤖). Basically, this new era is challenging a lot of long-held SaaS instincts. → BYOC is often replacing fully managed SaaS as buyers scrutinize infrastructure costs → Storage pricing might do best at near-zero markup to win with data gravity → Human-friendly pricing tiers break down when your buyer is now an AI agent → The real monetization opportunity happens downstream on transformations and inference Today's blog post unpacks lessons from a recent webinar with Aiven’s VP of Strategy, Ville Lehto, and Metronome’s CEO, Scott Woody. Those lessons are tied to the critical structural forces dismantling legacy models and what they reveal about pricing data infrastructure for the agentic era. Read the breakdown here on the blog: bit.ly/4yWERvn

This year's Monetize 2026 conference in Sonoma will bring together product, engineering, and finance leaders from top AI, SaaS, and infrastructure companies to tackle the hardest challenges in modern monetization. Last year’s sessions were masterclasses in leveraging pricing in the AI era, and this year, we're diving even deeper into: → Pricing for growth: Navigating product- and sales-led strategies → The AI margin squeeze: How finance leaders are handling cost pressures and token consumption → Monetizing the agentic era: Moving beyond token pass-through for coding agents and open-source models → Building for GTM complexity: Expanding multiple GTM motions globally Between these deep dives on the main stage and the informal, always-valuable after-talk discussions, this is the room where the next decade of software business models will be designed. If you’re building the future of software, you'll want to be here. Request your invite here: na2.hubs.ly/H06H2gy0

Monetization intelligence. Agent-led growth. Pricing complexity. AI-induced margin pressures. Sound like a familiar cluster-headache? You might want to request your invite to this year’s Monetize conference: na2.hubs.ly/H06H2gy0 Monetization and billing were racing toward a crescendo at last year’s conference, but it’s clearly not yet reached the peak. This September, we’re looking forward to hosting leaders from some of the top AI, SaaS, and InfraSaaS companies for discussions on how they’ve turned pricing and billing into a high-scale growth engine. This is your chance to hear from leaders at organizations like Clay, Fin (formerly Intercom), and Snowflake, as they talk through what’s changed since we gathered last year and what they’re planning for the future of the AI era. You can request your invite here: na2.hubs.ly/H06H2gy0 and take a look at the great speakers we have lined up: na2.hubs.ly/H06H3l30