US Corporate AI Spending Reaches Record High as Monthly Growth Decelerates to 1.65%
Enterprise spending on artificial intelligence hit a new peak in October 2026, though month-over-month growth slowed to 1.65%. Data from the Ramp AI Index shows spending remains heavily concentrated, with just 1% of companies driving 80% of revenue for key AI vendors.
Corporate spending on artificial intelligence in the United States climbed to a new record in October 2026, though the pace of expansion has noticeably cooled. According to the latest Ramp AI Index, corporate AI expenditure grew by just 1.65% month-over-month.
The index, compiled by financial services provider Ramp using payment data from more than 85,000 US business customers, highlights a widening gap between heavy enterprise spenders and average commercial users.
Massive Disparity in Enterprise AI Expenditure
The top 1% of corporate AI spenders paid a median of $10,200 per employee per month in October, representing a 9% increase from the previous month. By contrast, a typical company spent just $16.32 per employee per month—a minor rise of less than one dollar compared to September.
This spending concentration creates significant revenue dependence for leading AI developers. Ramp’s data reveals that 1% of companies account for 80% of total revenue for both OpenAI and Anthropic. This top tier consists primarily of venture-backed firms operating in technology, finance, and technical services, while adoption outside these sectors remains limited.
Ramp chief economist Ara Kharazian noted that these structural concentration risks persist across the sector. Ramp also acknowledged that its data skews toward tech-savvy, growth-oriented businesses, meaning broader corporate adoption across the wider US economy may be lower than reported.
OpenAI Outpaces Anthropic in Spending Growth
While Anthropic leads in vendor adoption rate on Ramp's platform at 44.8% (up 1.1 percentage points), OpenAI held steady at 40.6%. Overall adoption of AI services among tracked businesses rose to 56.8%.
However, in terms of spending trajectory, OpenAI grew faster than its main competitor. Business customer spending on OpenAI increased 2.1% month-over-month in October, whereas Anthropic spending grew by only 0.5%.
Software developer SpaceXSI—owner of the popular coding tool Cursor—saw spending grow 2.2% month-over-month, making it the fastest-growing software firm in Ramp's dataset. SpaceXSI currently holds a 6.3% market share on Ramp.
At the same time, the unit cost of AI access continues to decline. The average price per million processed text tokens dropped 21% in October. Usage volumes are increasing faster than total expenditure, driven by intense competition between OpenAI and Anthropic alongside rival open-weight models from China.
Customer Support Emerges as a Key Growth Driver
Software development teams remain the single largest consumer of enterprise AI budget, accounting for 72% of all tracked AI spending in October. However, their share has pulled back from summer peaks.
The fastest growth in adoption is shifting toward customer support and customer success departments. Their combined share of total enterprise AI spending surged from 0.8% in June to 13.3% in October, driven largely by the implementation of customer service chatbots. Leadership teams also registered slight spending increases.
Despite the rapid expansion in customer support use cases, Kharazian cautioned that these applications rely heavily on faster, lower-cost models rather than expensive flagship offerings. Consequently, new enterprise customers in support domains may yield lower profit margins for AI model providers. Premium flagship models—identified in the report as Opus, Fable, Sol, and Astra—still commanded 69.5% of total enterprise spending in October.
