Between the Hype · Interactive

The Unused AI Calculator

Most enterprises don't have an AI problem — they have an activation problem. SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and the rest have already shipped more embedded AI than most organisations use. This tool estimates what that unused capability is worth in your stack — from public list prices and published adoption research.

Your stack

Total headcount — used for defaults you can override per vendor.

Estimated unused AI value · per year

€0
Typical scenario — AI capability you already pay for, going unused
Paid AI, inactive seats Included AI, never activated

How this is calculated

Two components, three scenarios, every assumption on the table. This is an estimate built to be argued with — not a benchmark.

Component A — Paid AI seats that sit inactive mostly list prices

AI you explicitly bought — Microsoft 365 Copilot seats ($30/user/mo list), Salesforce Agentforce add-ons ($125/user/mo), ServiceNow Now Assist uplifts — valued at list price for the share of seats that published research says goes unused.

The anchor: reporting synthesising Microsoft disclosures with Gartner/Forrester survey data puts weekly-active usage at 20–30% of purchased Copilot seats, and under 40% daily-active even in committed programmes. The three scenarios assume 40% / 30% / 20% of paid AI seats are genuinely active.

Formula: seats × list price × 12 × (1 − active rate)

Component B — Included AI that was never switched on shadow-priced

The heart of the activation gap: capability already inside subscriptions you pay for. Oracle ships 100+ embedded agents and Agent Studio at no extra cost with Fusion. SAP bundles base Joule with RISE/GROW cloud contracts. Microsoft includes Copilot Chat with eligible M365 plans. Salesforce Foundations grants 100,000 free Flex Credits. SAP AI Units and Workday Flex Credits expire after 12 months — unused balances are simply forfeited.

Because included features carry no invoice line, they're valued at a shadow price — what comparable capability costs where it is priced (e.g. ServiceNow charges a $50–75/user AI uplift for capability Oracle bundles at €0). Shadow prices are clearly estimates; the conservative scenario sets most of them to zero, so the floor of the range is built almost entirely on invoiced numbers.

Formula: users × shadow price × 12 × (1 − activation rate) + forfeited prepaid AI credits

The scenario assumptions, side by side
AssumptionConservativeTypicalAggressiveBasis
Paid AI seats active40%30%20%Copilot weekly-active reporting, 2026 solid
Copilot Chat shadow value (per M365 seat/mo)€0€2€5Included at $0; full Copilot $30 ceiling estimate
Oracle embedded agents shadow (per Fusion user/mo)€0€10€34ServiceNow's $50–75 AI uplift as market comparable estimate
SAP base-Joule shadow (per SAP user/mo)€0€2€5Copilot-Chat analogue estimate
Included-AI activation rate25%10%5%MIT: 95% of GenAI pilots deliver no ROI proxy
Prepaid AI credits forfeited (SAP AI Units, Workday)25%46%70%S&P Global: firms scrapped 46% of AI PoCs proxy
Now Assist utilisation60%30%20%Analogy to Copilot data estimate

Currency: USD list prices converted at $1 ≈ €0.86 (mid-2026).

Sources
  • Microsoft: M365 Copilot $30/user/mo list (unchanged through the July 2026 price revisions); Copilot Chat included with eligible plans; Agent 365 $15/user/mo — microsoft.com pricing pages & licensing guides.
  • Copilot utilisation: ~20M paid seats vs ~450M M365 commercial seats; 20–30% of purchased seats weekly-active; <40% daily-active in committed orgs — Fortune / Digital Trends / Value Add VC synthesis of Microsoft disclosures + Gartner & Forrester surveys (2026).
  • SAP: Business AI Base incl. interactive Joule bundled with RISE/GROW since July 2025; premium & agentic capability metered via prepaid AI Units that expire after 12 months — SAP news & independent licensing analyses (2026).
  • Oracle: 100+ embedded Fusion AI agents and AI Agent Studio included at no additional cost; premium LLMs & custom agents metered — oracle.com (Fusion AI, Agent Studio announcement, Mar 2026).
  • Salesforce: Foundations includes 100,000 Flex Credits ($500 face value); Agentforce $0.10/action, $2/conversation, $125/user/mo add-on — salesforce.com press releases (2025).
  • ServiceNow: Now Assist sold as Pro Plus / Enterprise Plus uplift, advisory-estimated at $32–48/fulfiller/mo (list prices are NDA) — independent licensing advisories.
  • Workday: Illuminate agents consume Flex Credits; an annual allotment is included with the subscription and renews (use it or lose it) — workday.com newsroom (Sep 2025).
  • Failure & waste rates: MIT NANDA "GenAI Divide" — 95% of enterprise GenAI pilots show no measurable ROI (2025); S&P Global — 42% of firms scrapped most AI initiatives, average 46% of PoCs abandoned (2025); Zylo SaaS Management Index — 53% of SaaS licenses unused/underused, ~$21M average annual waste, $4,830 SaaS spend per employee (2025–26).

Honest footnote: utilisation evidence is strongest for Microsoft Copilot; applying it to other vendors is an analogy. Shadow prices value entitlements at what vendors charge elsewhere — not at realised business value. Both cuts are why the conservative scenario exists.

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