Asana's AI just got 90% cheaper to run, and so did every rival's
Anthropic cut token prices as much as 90% and named Asana the showcase customer; ASAN gained 16.8% in a week. The saving lands on Asana's cost line, and its competitors can buy the identical discount.
Vincent Jiang · 2 min read
A dime per million tokens
When Anthropic$350B — Anthropic, private, latest valuation $350B launched Claude Haiku 5.5 on October 7, it put an Asana engineer on the receipt+0.81% — put an Asana engineer on the receipt, up 0.81 percent today. Staff engineer Aaron Vinh reported task completions running more than 30% faster and inference up to 2.5 times quicker per agent turn 1. The rent under Asana's agents collapsed with him: for requests under 100,000 tokens, input now costs $0.10 per million and output $0.50, down from $1 and $5 for the prior Haiku, an average cost drop Anthropic puts near 75% 12. Anthropic frames such customer results as evaluation leads, not guaranteed outcomes 3. ASAN closed at $8.62 on October 2 and $10.07 on October 9, up 16.8% on the week 45.
Haiku 5.5 cut both input and output token prices by 90%
- Input per million tokens
- Output per million tokens
Data
| Input per million tokens | Output per million tokens | |
|---|---|---|
| Haiku 4.5 | $1/M tokens | $5/M tokens |
| Haiku 5.5 | $0.1/M tokens | $0.5/M tokens |
Fifty cents a request, and the meter is live
The cut lands mid-pivot. Asana's live pricing bundles 5 AI Teammate requests per user per month, capped at 50 to 250 per account, plus 50,000 to 200,000 AI Studio credits per account each month; requests past that cost $0.50 prepaid and $0.60 on demand 6. Chief Financial Officer Aziz Megji: "the new Asana is really around both seats and subscriptions and consumption and outcomes" 7. AI products drove 25% of net new ARR in the July quarter, up from 17% in Q1, and the full-year target rose to 20% 7.
AI products went from a sixth to a quarter of Asana's net new ARR in one quarter
- Share of net new ARR
- Estimate
Data
| Share of net new ARR | |
|---|---|
| Q1 FY27 | 17% |
| Q2 FY27 | 25% |
| FY27 target (estimate) | 20% |
The margin bleed cheap tokens must stop
The pivot is not free. Q2 revenue was $216.4 million, up 10%, but cost of revenues jumped 50% to $30.3 million, and GAAP gross margin fell to 86.0% from 89.7% a year earlier 8. Management blames AI compute and infrastructure plus the lower-margin StackAI acquisition 9. That is the fourth straight quarterly decline.
Asana's gross margin has fallen four straight quarters as AI costs land
Data
| GAAP gross margin | |
|---|---|
| Q1 '24 | 89.7% |
| Q2 '24 | 88.8% |
| Q3 '24 | 89.2% |
| Q4 '24 | 89.6% |
| Q1 '25 | 89.7% |
| Q2 '25 | 89.7% |
| Q3 '25 | 88.9% |
| Q4 '25 | 87.8% |
| Q1 '26 | 87.6% |
| Q2 '26 | 86% |
The same discount arms the competition
None of the cut belongs to Asana. It is public API pricing, and in a crowded field that includes monday.com0.00% — monday.com, unchanged today and Notion~$10B — Notion, private, latest valuation ~$10B, every AI buyer gets the same deflation: whatever Asana saves, a competitor with the same bill saves too, which tends to surface as cheaper software rather than wider moats 3. Asana has lifted its full-year operating margin target to 10%, from 9.5% where the year began 7.
December 2 is the first reading
The next report, estimated for December 2, is the first test of whether a dime-per-million engine fattens gross margin or merely arms a cheaper list price 5. Wall Street stays at Hold, average target $9.95, a shade under the October 9 close 45. Asana sells an AI request for fifty cents; the engine underneath just fell to a dime per million tokens. Which side of that spread keeps the money is what December has to answer.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
