Pricing Model & COGS Analysis
Autonomous automation subscription with SLM cost advantage (AWS deployment example)
Infrastructure Cost Summary
Per customer monthly costs (steady state)
Note: Costs shown are for AWS deployment. Platform supports cloud-agnostic deployment on AWS, Azure, or GCP with comparable cost structures.
Account 1: Cloud AI Services + LLM Infrastructure
| Service | Monthly Cost | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Conversational AI Service | $502 | Natural language interface for queries and automation |
| Amazon Bedrock (LLM) | $158 | Claude 3.5 Sonnet/Haiku inference, 8,300 tickets/month |
| Bedrock Knowledge Bases | $29 | RAG pipeline, embeddings, OpenSearch Serverless vector DB |
| Amazon S3 | $1 | Document storage with PII filtering (Glue DataBrew) |
| Amazon RDS | $70 | PostgreSQL 15, db.t4g.medium, 100 GB gp3 SSD |
| VPC & Networking | $62 | 3 VPC Endpoints (PrivateLink), NAT Gateway |
| CloudWatch & Monitoring | $19 | Logs, metrics, alarms, CloudTrail |
| AWS KMS | $3 | 3 customer managed keys (S3, RDS, Knowledge Base) |
| Account 1 Total | $844/month | 87% of total infrastructure cost |
Account 2: Frontend + API
| Service | Monthly Cost | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon API Gateway | $2 | REST API, 500K requests/month |
| AWS Lambda | $4 | Python + boto3 handlers, 600K invocations/month |
| ECS Fargate (KeyCloak) | $36 | 2 tasks (HA), 0.5 vCPU, 1 GB RAM each, 24/7 |
| RDS (KeyCloak DB) | $14 | PostgreSQL, db.t4g.micro, 20 GB gp3 |
| AWS WAF | $10 | Web ACL + 5 managed rules, 500K requests |
| CloudFront (CDN) | $2 | 10 GB data transfer, 100K requests |
| VPC & Networking | $52 | 2 VPC Endpoints, NAT Gateway |
| CloudWatch | $8 | Lambda logs, API Gateway logs, metrics, alarms |
| Secrets Manager | $2 | 5 secrets (KeyCloak DB, AI service credentials, etc.) |
| Account 2 Total | $130/month | 13% of total infrastructure cost |
💡 Strategic Partner Credits (AWS + NVIDIA)
$150,000 total in partner credits (AWS $50K + NVIDIA $100K) significantly reduce infrastructure costs during our initial customer onboarding phase.
AWS: $50,000 in credits ($10K received, $40K pending - 2 installments Q2-Q3 2026)
NVIDIA: $100,000 in approved GPU compute credits for AI model training and inference
~$12.5K/month effective infrastructure savings during 2026
Improves Year 1 gross margins for early customers to 90-91%
AWS technical resources, Bedrock optimization, GTM support
Full Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) Analysis
Infrastructure is only 26-33% of total COGS
Critical Distinction
The infrastructure costs above ($11,700-$12,000/year) represent only cloud infrastructure costs — approximately 26-33% of total COGS. For accurate gross margin calculations and investor due diligence, the full cost to serve a customer must include all operational costs.
Year 1 COGS (Includes Implementation)
| Cost Category | Annual Cost | % of COGS | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Infrastructure | $12,000 | 26% | AI services, LLM inference, storage, compute (detailed above) |
| Customer Success | $12,000 | 26% | 0.1 FTE allocation per customer (~$120K salary) |
| Technical Support | $6,000 | 13% | Engineering support, troubleshooting, escalations |
| DevOps & Operations | $4,000 | 9% | Platform maintenance, monitoring, incident response |
| Tools & Security | $2,000 | 4% | Compliance tooling, monitoring, security scanning |
| Implementation (one-time) | $10,000 | 22% | Intelligent schema discovery (5-min automated), custom workflow config, training |
| Year 1 Total COGS | $46,000 | 100% |
Year 2+ COGS (Steady State)
| Cost Category | Annual Cost | % of COGS | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Infrastructure | $12,000 | 33% | AI services, LLM inference, storage, compute |
| Customer Success | $12,000 | 33% | 0.1 FTE allocation per customer |
| Technical Support | $6,000 | 17% | Engineering support, troubleshooting |
| DevOps & Operations | $4,000 | 11% | Platform maintenance, monitoring |
| Tools & Security | $2,000 | 6% | Compliance, monitoring, security tooling |
| Implementation | $0 | 0% | One-time cost (Year 1 only) |
| Year 2+ Total COGS | $36,000 | 100% |
Gross Margin Calculations
Autonomous Automation Subscription Model
Year 1 Margins
Year 2+ Margins
Autonomous Automation Subscription Model
Per-discipline subscription with SLM cost advantage:
| Model Element | Details |
|---|---|
| Per-Discipline Subscription | Customers subscribe to back-office automation services per discipline |
| Land & Expand | Start with one discipline (AP or CS), add more as value is proven |
| SLM Cost Advantage | 70% of requests handled by self-hosted SLMs at ~$0 cost |
Revenue Sources Breakdown
Composition of customer revenue streams
Revenue Model
Autonomous Automation Subscription
Revenue by Discipline
Land & Expand Per Discipline
Revenue Model Advantages
Recurring Base
Service subscription per discipline provides predictable, recurring revenue
SLM Cost Advantage
70% of requests handled by SLMs at ~$0 cost, with LLMs only for complex tasks (30%)
No Implementation Dependency
Unlike competitors who rely on one-time setup fees, our service subscription model is 100% recurring after Year 1
Expansion Opportunity
As customers add disciplines (Finance, Procurement), base revenue grows 3-5X within 18-24 months
COGS Reduction Roadmap (At Scale)
Path to 93.7% gross margin at 100+ customers
Scaling Efficiencies (100+ Customers)
| Cost Category | Current | At 100+ Customers | Optimization Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Infrastructure | $12,000 | $9,000 | Enterprise discounts (25%), Reserved Capacity, Committed Use |
| Customer Success | $12,000 | $8,000 | Self-service portal, automated health monitoring, playbooks |
| Technical Support | $6,000 | $4,000 | Automated troubleshooting, comprehensive knowledge base |
| DevOps & Operations | $4,000 | $2,000 | Infrastructure as Code, automated deployments, CI/CD |
| Tools & Security | $2,000 | $1,000 | Volume pricing on monitoring/security tools |
| Implementation | $10,000 | $6,000 | Templatized onboarding, automated data migration |
| Year 1 Total | $46,000 | $30,000 | 35% reduction |
| Year 2+ Total | $36,000 | $24,000 | 33% reduction |
| Gross Margin (Year 2+) | 90.6% | 93.7% | (at $400K-$600K subscription ACV) |
Margin Analysis vs. SaaS Benchmarks
Top quartile performance across all scenarios
Multikor Gross Margin Scenarios
| Scenario | Revenue | COGS | Gross Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 (single discipline) | $400K-$600K | $46K | 88-92% |
| Year 2+ (steady state) | $400K-$600K | $36K | 91-94% |
| Multi-discipline expansion | $1.2M-$2.5M | $72K | 94-97% |
| At scale (100+ customers) | $400K-$600K | $24K | 94-96% |
Regulated Industries: Deferred to 2028+
Healthcare, financial services, and other regulated verticals
Regulated Industries: Deferred to 2028+
Healthcare, financial services, and other regulated industries require additional compliance infrastructure (HIPAA, SOX). These markets are Wave 4 in our GTM strategy, planned for 2028+ after establishing the SLM + methodology platform in less-regulated industries.
Model Verification
All costs verified from official sources