Gross-margin audits for seed–Series A AI startups

Some of your customers are losing you money. You just can't see which.

NetBack computes your true gross margin per customer after inference cost, flags the ones bleeding you, and tells you exactly what to reprice — before it shows up in your burn.

Not another cost dashboard — the decision, and the fix.

Book your free margin audit →
20 minutes · read-only · your numbers never leave your control · no pitch
sample margin audit
Monthly margin leaking
$0
Blended gross margin 58% · inference = 31% of revenue
Northwind AI · Scale −$2,180−148%
Halcyon · Pro −$1,940−90%
Vellum · Growth +$1,76074%
Cirrus · Pro +$98066%
4 of 26 customers margin-negativeStripe + model usage
What you'll need

Read-only Stripe access + your model-usage export. About five minutes of setup.

Your data

Used only for your audit — never shared, never published, deleted on request.

Works with

Stripe + OpenAI, Anthropic & Google — and the gateways you already run.

Why this is invisible

AI broke the rule that the next customer is free.

Inference is now a real cost of goods — variable, per-customer, and mostly untracked. Margin is the new runway, and the leak hides in plain sight.

8%

of AI companies actually know their cost-to-serve per customer.

20–30%

of revenue is eaten by inference at scaling AI startups.

#1

gross margin is now the first question VCs ask at Series A.

The free audit

A one-page read on where your margin goes.

→Gross margin per customer — revenue vs real inference cost.
→The customers bleeding you — flagged, worst first.
→How much you leak per month — one hard number.
→The underpriced plan that's quietly costing you.
→How you compare to peers — NetBack Intelligence benchmarks.
→The top 3 moves to recover margin, with the projected dollars.
How it works

Connect. See the leak. Stop it.

STEP 01

Connect

Point NetBack at Stripe + your model usage. Read-only, about five minutes.

STEP 02

See

Get true per-customer margin — and the exact customers and plans in the red.

STEP 03

Act

Reprice, cap, or repackage the money-losers — and keep them from creeping back.

Built by an
operator,
not a
dashboard

Built by an operator who spent two decades with pricing and gross margin as the day job — CEO / COO / Head of Product across fintech (trading, a crypto exchange), adtech (DSP / SSP / ad exchange), and mobile analytics. It's that P&L playbook aimed at AI companies: not another cost chart, but the decision about what to do with it.

— Toki, founder · tc@netback.ai

Free · 20 minutes · no pitch

Find out which customers are eating your margin.

Bring your Stripe + model usage. Leave with the number — and the plan to fix it.

Book your free margin audit →

Free · 20 minutes · no pitch · you keep the audit either way

Sample AI Margin & Pricing Audit · illustrative data

Northwind AI

fintech-ai · seed · sample
$4,120/mo leaking
4 of 26 customers margin-negative · blended margin 58% · inference 31% of revenue
Blended margin 58% vs fintech-AI peer median 64% · NetBack Intelligence

Per-customer margin — worst first

CustomerPlanMRRInferenceMargin%
Northwind OpsScale$1,470$3,650−$2,180−148%
Halcyon LabsPro$2,150$4,090−$1,940−90%
OnyxScale$1,520$2,130−$610−40%
MeridianGrowth$1,320$1,150+$17013%
FathomStarter$490$410+$8016%
CirrusPro$1,490$505+$98566%
LarkspurPro$1,740$500+$1,24071%
VellumGrowth$2,390$630+$1,76074%

Margin by plan

PlanCustomersAvg margin %Read
Scale6−22%underpriced for its usage
Starter918%thin — no usage ceiling
Pro867%healthy
Growth370%healthy

Top moves to recover margin

  1. 1Reprice Scale: it loses money on every heavy account — add a usage floor + overage, or a hard cap. Biggest single lever.
  2. 2Cap or offboard the 3 chronic margin-negative accounts — together they erase the profit of ~7 healthy customers.
  3. 3Route Starter's high-volume, low-stakes calls to a cheaper model — est. −35% inference on that tier.
Projected recovery: ~$3,200/mo (≈78% of the leak) within one billing cycle.
Sample with illustrative data — not a real company. In a live audit these come from your Stripe + model-usage data; your numbers are never shared or published.