India, June 16 -- The global B2B technology landscape is at an inflexion point as the sector is now pivoting from traditional software architectures to agentic SaaS, or 'outcome-as-a-service'. However, the economics of this shift remain challenging.

According to ICONIQ Capital's 2026 State of AI report, AI-native B2B startups operate with gross margins of just 52%, with model inference costs alone accounting for 23% of revenue. As a result, heavy token consumption is emerging as a major constraint on profitability.

As a result, a number of industry leaders argue that building sustainable agentic products requires more than powerful models. The real differentiator lies in designing robust workflow guardrails that keep costs under control...