Runway
Runway With AI Cost Shock
Your AI vendor raises prices 50% next quarter — what happens to your runway? Stress-test it before the email arrives.
Result
1.8 months shorter than today's 18.
Runway before and after
Months of cash before and after the shock, against the months revenue needs to reach break-even.
How to use it
- Enter your current runway in months (cash divided by today's net burn, meaning total burn minus revenue), your monthly AI cost, your monthly total burn, the price shock percentage you want to model, your monthly revenue growth rate, and your monthly revenue. The AI cost must be a subset of total burn, and the price shock applies only to the AI line, which is the point of the tool: it isolates how exposed your runway is to one volatile, vendor-controlled cost.
- Read the new runway in months with revenue held flat (indefinite when revenue covers the new burn) and how it compares with today's, the extra AI cost per year, the runway if revenue keeps growing at your rate, the break-even monthly revenue, and the months to reach break-even at your growth rate. The new runway figure is the headline, showing how many months a vendor price hike quietly removes from your cushion.
- Use the gap between current and shocked runway to size your exposure. If a 50% AI price increase costs you several months of runway, your survival depends on a cost line you do not control, which is a strategic risk worth hedging through model diversification, caching, or contracts before it materialises rather than after.
- Compare break-even revenue against the months-to-break-even at your growth rate to see whether you can outrun the shock. If revenue growth reaches break-even before the shortened runway expires, the price hike is survivable; if not, you need to cut burn, raise, or reduce AI dependency. Test a steeper shock and a slower growth rate together for a genuine worst case.
- Re-run whenever your vendor signals pricing changes or your AI usage grows as a share of burn, since the more AI-dependent you become, the larger the shock you should stress against. Pair this with the LLM vendor lock-in tool to weigh switching providers and the model price drop stress test for the upside case where costs fall instead of rise.
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Articles
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Use it from code
The same calculation as a JavaScript module you can import. It runs where you import it, with no request, key or rate limit.
import { compute } from "https://aibizhub.io/engines/runway-with-ai-cost-shock.js"; Input and output contract, TypeScript types and the guide for agents.