The End of Subsidised AI Coding Is Already Here

You remember the $3 Uber rides, right? The too-cheap-to-be-true phase where investor cash was quietly buying your loyalty. That exact playbook is running right now in AI coding tools, and the first big signal just dropped. Microsoft is killing flat-rate Copilot subscriptions on June 1, 2026 and moving everything to pay-as-you-go. Your $20 monthly subscription becomes $20 of pre-paid API credit, which makes the subscription itself pointless. The message is clear: the era of burning investor money