This makes me wonder - what gross margin might Cursor, and the similar AI IDEs, might be operating at right now?
Traditionally, most SaaS was designed to have 80%+ gross margin (cost after direct costs such as cloud hosting, support etc.). Surely cursor etc. would have much smaller margin with 500+ premium-model requests @20$?
FinnLobsien•8mo ago
I read a Substack titled "Does AI have a gross margin problem" recently that stipulated that Anthropic was operating at 50-55% gross margins and investors expect long-term gross margins to be at 60ish%.
Granted, they own the models, so you could assume people building with their models capture less margin.
severusdd•8mo ago
Traditionally, most SaaS was designed to have 80%+ gross margin (cost after direct costs such as cloud hosting, support etc.). Surely cursor etc. would have much smaller margin with 500+ premium-model requests @20$?
FinnLobsien•8mo ago
Granted, they own the models, so you could assume people building with their models capture less margin.