SpaceX has years-long development timelines, huge capital and personnel costs, and huge liabilities/risks. Yet they can give you predictable pricing and understandable margins and cost models. Sure they are rigid in their requirements, but that pales in comparison to / is far from them using it as a pricing factor in comparison with the requirements asked of a sales guy selling a software team's services.

At the heart of it, the ridiculous pricing practices of "contact us" pricing are to test what a customer is willing to pay.

Have a look at this ML-favorite lately. $50/month for a general user turns into something you will not believe for corporate users. Totally testing what they can get away with. https://wandb.ai/site/pricing