I read a lot of stuff from A16Z where the analysts have started qualifying what Marc Andreessen flogs as “the stratification of intelligence”. It’s a perspective about Artificial General Intelligence in the realm where AI is no longer a single button or a set of questions and answers. AGI comes with tiers of use and price points that represent both utility and the compute required to run the capabilities we need.
Here is what I already see in the people who I meet using AI.
Knowledge Workers paying €22 monthly
I have trained more than 1000 people since early 2023 who are in the Consumer Tier using paid versions of ChatGPT Plus, Claude, Copilot Pro and Gemini.
The Analogy: For these people, AI is like having a very smart, slightly distracted intern.
Purpose: They need to summarise documents, write research proposals, and cut basic code. They need AI to boost personal productivity. They feel like they’re paying for a Netflix subscription because the cost of running the model for a single user is relatively low. Many of the university students in this tier share log-ins.
The Digitally Transformed Employee paying $200/month earning €100,000 annually
Some of my friends sit in the Professional Replacement Tier.The Analogy: They pay this cost because it’s a business expense. They’re often in mid-level white collar jobs running teams in medtech, fintech, or supply chain companies.
Purpose: At that monthly price point, they’re not just buying a chatbot. They have learned to configure and run more than one agent to operate autonomously on 9-9-6 schedules, managing complex workflows, filing expenses, or maintaining a codebase. I have heard some companies are considering paying “salary-equivalent” prices for AI with tokens that can perform at a human level 24x7x365.
Expert/Elite €1,000/day (€350k/year)
This is the Specialist Tier.
The Analogy: This is what people in Ireland pay for top barristers, a senior software architect, or a specialized consultant.
Purpose: This tier of AI service buys you high-reasoning compute. It’s AI that doesn’t just follow instructions but solves hard problems. Its daily logs produce scientific breakthroughs, complex legal strategies, or high-level architecture. It requires massive amounts of processing power (and significant subscription services) to yield extremely high-value outputs. There is at least one Irish company at this level. You might meet them in June at the Amplify 2026 Conference in Kilkenny.
Sovereign Tier $10 Billion
This is the Infrastructure Tier.
The Analogy:> Go into the 3D ring of the Pentagon or visit China to see this tier working.
Purpose: But this isn’t a subscription. The ten billion dollar is the cost of training and owning a frontier model. This tier is reserved for nation-states or the world’s largest corporations. It represents the foundational intelligence upon which all the other tiers are built. If you spend $10 billion, you aren’t just using AI; you are controlling the brain that defines the market.
The Big Picture
Listening to AI executives and investors in Silicon Valley talk, I believe we have commodified intelligence. Just as we have different prices for electricity (residential vs. industrial) or transportation (Free Travel, train ticket, corporate jets), we now have different prices for thinking. As both OpenAI and Anthropic move towards IPOs, we are approaching a friction point. We should not expect AGI will be a single, free entity. Those freshly minted public companies need profits. It is likely that before the end of this decade, AGI will be a tiered utility where the more reasoning you need, the more you will pay.
But there will always be cheap seats and cheerful spaces for the unwashed masses to work with chatbots and generate simple images, videos, and online content to amuse us through the day.