Key takeaways from Kevin Zhang, Global GTM Director at Antom, during his recent session at AI Founders & Global Scale.
For most AI founders today, growth isn't the problem.
Launching a product has never been easier. Foundation models, open-source tools, AI coding assistants, and cloud infrastructure have dramatically lowered the barriers to building powerful AI applications.
The result?
More products.
More users.
More downloads.
More sign-ups.
But one question continues to challenge even the fastest-growing companies:
How do you turn all of that growth into sustainable revenue?
Because growth isn't complete until it becomes revenue.
The commercialization challenge
For many AI businesses, the conversation still revolves around product adoption.
How many people visited?
How many users registered?
How many people are actively using the product?
These are important metrics.
But they don't always translate into business success.
Imagine an AI company with:
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10 million website visitors
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2 million registrations
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800,000 active users
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200,000 paying customers
The obvious question becomes:
What happened to everyone else?
The answer is rarely the product itself.
Revenue often leaks away through dozens of small friction points.
Revenue leakage happens everywhere
As companies expand internationally, commercialization becomes significantly more complex.
Customers abandon checkout because familiar payment methods aren't available.
Pricing doesn't match local expectations.
Subscriptions fail.
Legitimate payments are blocked.
Compliance becomes difficult to manage.
Tax requirements vary across markets.
Individually, these seem like operational issues.
Collectively, they become a growth problem.
Growth isn't a funnel anymore
Many businesses still think about customer acquisition as a linear funnel.
Acquire users.
Convert users.
Generate revenue.
Today's AI businesses work differently.
Growth behaves more like a flywheel.
Acquire users.
Convert them.
Monetize them.
Retain them.
Satisfied customers generate referrals, more usage, and stronger products, creating the next cycle of growth.
The companies that scale fastest aren't always acquiring more users.
They're becoming better at converting the users they already have.
The next competitive advantage isn't better AI
The AI industry has become incredibly competitive.
Building a model is no longer enough.
The real differentiator is how effectively companies monetize what they've built.
Pricing strategies continue to evolve.
Some businesses charge subscriptions.
Others charge based on API usage.
Many combine subscriptions with usage.
Some use credits.
Increasingly, AI companies are moving towards outcome-based pricing, charging customers only when a task is successfully completed.
Each pricing model introduces new operational challenges.
How do you meter usage?
How do you invoice enterprise customers?
How do you reconcile revenue globally?
How do you support multiple currencies?
How do you manage compliance across markets?
The product may be AI.
The business behind it becomes much more complex.
Commercialization is now infrastructure
This is why commercialization should be viewed as an end-to-end system rather than a payment transaction.
Successful global businesses think across every stage of growth:
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Acquiring customers
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Converting customers
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Monetizing customers
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Retaining customers
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Expanding internationally
Supporting each stage requires infrastructure that can scale alongside the business.
That includes pricing, billing, payment orchestration, fraud prevention, compliance, settlement and growth analytics.
As businesses grow, these capabilities become increasingly interconnected.
Customer experience doesn't end when someone decides to buy.
It continues all the way through checkout.
Five questions founders should ask before entering a new market
Before launching into a new country, it helps to step back and ask a different set of questions.
Instead of asking:
"Can we launch?"
Ask:
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Do customers genuinely want our product?
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Can they pay using methods they already trust?
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Does our pricing model fit local buying behavior?
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Can our infrastructure support future growth?
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Can we scale without rebuilding everything six months from now?
The answers to these questions often determine whether expansion succeeds.
Turning global growth into sustainable revenue
AI has dramatically reduced the cost of building products.
It hasn't reduced the complexity of building international businesses.
The companies that succeed won't simply build smarter AI.
They'll build stronger commercialization systems.
Because the next competitive advantage isn't acquiring more users.
It's converting more of them into long-term revenue.
How Antom supports global growth
At Antom, we help businesses think beyond accepting payments.
We work with merchants to build the infrastructure that supports international growth from payment orchestration and billing to fraud management, settlement, compliance and localized checkout experiences.
As AI businesses expand into new markets, commercialization becomes just as important as innovation.
Helping businesses convert growth into sustainable revenue is where we believe the next generation of global commerce will be built.
Final thoughts
For AI companies looking beyond their home markets, commercialization should be part of the growth strategy from day one, not something addressed after international expansion begins.
Because building users creates momentum.
Building revenue creates sustainable businesses.
Planning your global expansion?
Learn how Antom helps businesses simplify cross-border payments, improve checkout performance and build scalable revenue infrastructure for international growth.
