Changes in pricing policies at Anthropic are expected regarding cloud services. It was reported that Cloud will apply per-seat usage rates along with consumption commitment to enterprise clients. In addition, the firm has discontinued its practice of offering API discounts for enterprise clients. The new pricing policy is less expensive than previous fixed-tier plans; however, the amount of cost depends more on usage.

According to a report by Let's Data Science, the company has now started charging lower seat fees ($20 per month) for several roles, including technical and business seats, compared to the previous $40–200 per month. However, users will now be required to pay based on estimated monthly token usage, even if their actual usage is lower than anticipated. Furthermore, the removal of the 10–15 percent API discount will also increase the burden on enterprise users.

The newly introduced pricing policy will put Cloud on par with its large competitors among individual users; however, the discontinuation of API discounts, together with the requirement for monthly token estimation, increases total cost of ownership for enterprises.

This move comes at a time when AI companies are investing billions of dollars in the development of AI technologies, but business revenues have yet to match. Recently, speaking at the BlackRock US Infrastructure Summit in Washington, DC, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicted that AI could eventually become a basic service people use every day, much like electricity, where people pay for it based on how much they use.

Anthropic's new plans are a step in this direction, where seat fees cover only platform access and customers will commit to estimated monthly token usage and pay in advance for the amount they plan to use.

Meanwhile, this move may also have been necessitated by recent reports that many users complained of being unable to fully utilize Cloud because token consumption was occurring faster than expected.

Following an investigation on April 3, the company reported that most of the high token usage, or 'burn,' was due to certain usage patterns that required large amounts of tokens. At the time, Anthropic's Lydia Hallie also stated that the company was implementing further efficiency improvements.

Meanwhile, Anthropic recently announced that its run-rate revenue (RRR) now exceeds $30 billion, reflecting the company's growing popularity. This figure is impressive, especially considering that the company previously projected its RRR to be $9 billion by the end of 2025.

Anthropic is also expanding its capacity to meet anticipated demand. The company recently signed a new agreement with Google and Broadcom for several gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity. According to the company, this new infrastructure is expected to be operational by 2027.