AI agent portals risk 'Uber-style' losses as usage grows
Meta's personal AI agent Muse and OpenAI's dots have kicked off a contest for the "AI agent portal," joined by Google's Gemini Spark and xAI's Grok Bot. The analysis argues these services give each user a dedicated cloud computer and run long reasoning tasks, so more users and more delegated tasks mean higher cloud and token costs, without the ad-supported offsetting that search or social networks enjoy — an "Uber-style subsidy." OpenAI adjusted subscription pricing alongside dots, adding a $500-a-month tier and changing usage limits on the $200 Pro plan, with a sharper focus on enterprise buyers, while Meta has floated taking a cut of agent-driven transactions.
If agent tasks keep costing more than they earn, wider adoption deepens losses, shifting the key metrics from user counts to tasks per agent and cost per task.