Was the monthly AI subscription a scam, designed to hide what these services actually cost? GitHub Copilot switched to token-based billing, and OpenAI needs to 10x its revenue by 2030 to keep Oracle from collapsing. Long, angry, and very footnoted. (Ed Zitron)
- GitHub Copilot is switching to token-based billing in June, ending a three-year arrangement where Microsoft absorbed losses of $20 or more per user per month on a $10-19 subscription.
- Zitron argues this was never an accident: AI companies deliberately hid true token costs to build user habits, and the monthly subscription model was structurally impossible from day one.
- The deeper problem is that OpenAI needs to 10x revenue by 2030 to cover its compute commitments, and if it falls short, Oracle, which has mortgaged its future on Stargate data centers, faces a cascading collapse.
