Devin AI's pricing: Is it the future of AI pricing model or...is Devin playing safe?

The much controversial AI coding platform, Devin is back with its public launch and well, the pricing options.

What's Devin's pricing structure?

No trial. No plans available for individual developers. $500/month. Pure B2B.

Now, there are 2 ways to look at it:

We mean business

B2B first approach: At $500/month, Devin is positioning itself as a junior AI engineer - and is targeting the B2B space (i.e. engineering teams) which means somebody in the company (likely, the engineering budget) is going to pay for the tool to improve engineer team’s productivity.

In case of Devin, it seems that the pricing is tightly tied to its positioning and ICP - i.e of a junior AI engineer a team would need (why would an indie developer need a junior engg alongside?) and well..pushed by the senior management.

Let’s not forget that B2B deals are done over price (and various other factors which have nothing to do with product quality) - so why not B2B!

Playing safe

Maybe: There isn’t enough moat for Devin to compete with the likes of Cursor?

For a company that has raised at $2Bn valuation (before the product launch!), the valuation justification and the next round will only come from damn-bloody-good ARR numbers - and we all know selling to teams/enterprise offers a much better revenue growth than dealing with individual-opinionated-developers. 

Plus, the indie developer space is (as of now) owned by Cursor / Github and you need to be really really 10X better to get some mindshare. 

And given the controversy around Devin (their fancy viral demo was questioned by many and investigations revealed discrepancies between Devin’s claims vs actual performance which put the company in backfoot), the company is better off not putting its tool in front of too many (opinionated) developers and instead focus on (sober) engineering teams - who are trying to get their job done.

As far as early reviews are concerned, it’s a mixed bag with some claiming Devin to work as-promised while most as an underwhelming experience.

But here is the thing: if you are building a tool that can be used by team members - maybe a good idea to come up with a flat pricing instead of pricing per seat (with a fair usage plan in place) - makes the decision less stressful?

What’s your take on Devin’s pricing?