According to a Forrester analysis, over four in five business leaders expect to increase software budgets over the next twelve months, with 82% of IT decision-makers anticipating larger budgets for 2027. This uptick is not solely due to increased confidence in tech spending but also stems from a structural shift in AI software pricing models.
Consumption-based AI pricing makes costs unpredictable
Software vendors are shifting from traditional per-seat licenses to token or credit pricing, introducing variables such as model selection, context size, output length, and agent operating time. This makes expenditures far less predictable. As Sharyn Leaver, Chief Research Officer at Forrester, notes, "Business leaders are no longer planning for a return to stability – they’re planning for a future where volatility is a constant." Concrete examples include GitHub moving its Copilot plans to usage-based billing in June, OpenAI adding pay-as-you-go Codex seats in April, and Anthropic removing Fable 5 from standard subscriptions due to unpredictable demand.
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Targeted investments to improve data quality
The Forrester report identifies two key areas for companies to focus their 2027 budgets: building machine-readable context and enterprise knowledge, and increasing brand visibility in answer engines. AI can play a major role in marketing and customer-facing experiences, as well as in using synthetic data, subject to testing. As highlighted in the article on China and AI, Italian SMEs risk falling behind if they cannot manage rising AI software costs. Targeted investment, rather than indiscriminate spending, is key: "The organizations that outperform in 2027 won’t be those that spend the most on AI. They’ll be the ones that invest in the foundations that make AI effective," Leaver concludes. For more details, see the original report on TechRadar.
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