Industry & policy New
Business AI spending barely grew in August and September even as usage rose, Ramp's economist tells TechCrunch
Published:
Spending by US businesses on AI model tokens recorded two straight months of virtually no growth in August and September, even as token volumes rose, Ramp lead economist Ara Kharazian told TechCrunch in an article published at 15:54 UTC on Friday. Ramp, a corporate card and expense company, tracks AI payments by more than 85,000 American businesses for its Ramp AI Index.
Ramp's own October update, published on 14 October, says the top 1% of firms paying for AI spent $9,568 per employee per month in September, 3.1% below their July high of $9,873, while overall paid AI adoption reached 55.9% of businesses on Ramp. The median firm paying for AI spent $15.70 per employee per month.
New in the interview: Kharazian said token spend re-accelerated 8.9% from 23 September to 23 October, but that the headwinds remain strong. He blamed price cuts by OpenAI and Anthropic and thriftier customers rather than weaker demand. "Almost the entire spend on AI is from venture-backed, high-growth tech companies," he told TechCrunch, adding: "The era of hypergrowth may be over."
TechCrunch also reported that Anthropic said in a recent filing that its price cuts reduced revenue growth by about $600 million; that filing was not read for this edition.
Caveat. Ramp's sample covers its own customers, and Ramp says its top-1% estimate is volatile and subject to revision. The October 8.9% figure comes from the TechCrunch interview and was not found in a published Ramp index update; most September figures were first published on 14 October.
Sources