A friend of mine works at big corporate. He is in meetings all the time and barely codes. For him a 20$ AI subscription is more than enough.
I'm personally at a fintech startup and have a 100$ subscription. Our org is much leaner and its much faster to ship stuff. What used to be entire departments or teams can now be done by two or three people. Three people to ensure we share context and have a decent tram factor.
Its a little odd that you think these two examples are comparable. How many customers does his product have and how many does yours?
Of course a leaner team can ship faster. But your stakes are much lower. A production bug has less visibility and impact. Limited revenue means less stakeholders, and less opinions about how and what to do in a startup. Less customers means less customer support and feedback. The differences go on and on. I'm not sure you can attribute all of that to AI assistance.
Good luck with your fintech startup. I'm in that space too and its a bear.