Stripe wants to turn its AI costs into a profit center

Stripe on Monday released a preview of a new feature that could help AI startups (and other companies) solve the problem of passing on the underlying costs of using an AI model to their customers.

However, Stripe’s advantage goes further than simply going through token costs. It allows startups to charge a markup percentage on token usage. So the company could, for example, charge an automatic fee of 30% on top of the cost of the tokens that the startup would pay to the model maker.

As Stripe describes it, “Let’s say you’re building an AI application: you want a fixed 30% margin on raw LLM code costs across providers. Billing automates the process.”

The billing feature allows the startup to choose which AI models it uses. It tracks the API prices for those models. It then records customers’ use of the token and automatically applies markup markup.

As mentioned earlier, there are a variety of ways in which AI startups charge for their products. Many of them charge tiered monthly subscriptions that have usage caps; Once these points are reached, the subscriber may be charged additional fees for exceeding the limit.

For example, last year Cursor changed prices on some of its tiers from unlimited to limited usage, with additional consumption fees on top.

Without a usage cap, users can load large invoices to a startup with model makers, forcing the startup to run in the red. This is especially acute for proxy startups. The more their customers use their agents, the more tokens they consume from the underlying model provider, whether it’s OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic, or others — making pricing and business model decisions especially critical.

Stripe also introduced its AI portal, a tool that gives users access to multiple templates, allowing them to choose the best one for the task. But the billing tool also works with third-party gateways that are already very popular, like those offered by Vercel and OpenRouter, according to a tweet from a Stripe product manager.

There are, of course, other startups offering AI model cost management features through their own portals. For example, OpenRouter, which gives access to over 300 models, charges a flat 5.5% profit on the token fee for the tier 1 plan, and offers budget controls as well.

Stripe does not currently charge its own fees for the portal, his product manager on X said. However, the feature is still on hold. Either way, if Stripe can help startups easily turn tracking and billing for these expenses into a profit maker, it could be a game-changer. Stripe did not immediately respond to a request for comment on when the feature might be generally available.