Ramp data shows AI spending stalling as Anthropic nears IPO

A new Ramp report says companies are using more AI than ever, but their spending has flatlined over late summer even as token volumes rose. The data suggests price competition and savvier customers may be capping revenue for OpenAI and Anthropic as Anthropic gears up for an IPO. Ramp lead economist Ara Kharazian said the slowdown could hit the venture-backed tech firms that account for almost all AI spend.

Ramp sees flat spending despite rising volumes

According to Ramp, token spend grew only 1.5 percent across August and September, compared with 42 percent growth in July from the previous month. Kharazian said the top 1 percent of firms, the most "AI-pilled," stuttered slightly in August and September, coming just below the $10,000 per employee they were hitting at summer peaks. Ramp data shows growth in spending among median and top 10 percent firms, but it is not enough to make up the difference; median firms spend $12 to $15 per employee per month, and the top 10 percent spend $600 to $1,000. October data did see a re-acceleration, with token spend up 8.9 percent from September 23 to October 23, but Kharazian said the headwinds on spend growth are strong.

Price cuts and thriftier buyers reshape the market

Kharazian said the slowdown is not due to a demand problem because AI volumes are up. Instead, he points to the competitive nature of the marketplace. In September, OpenAI cut API prices in half for GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, and Anthropic made significant reductions to pricing for Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5, a decision the company said in a recent filing slashed revenue growth by about $600 million. Both companies have also offered enterprise discounts intended to lock in spend, but in reality are hitting their revenue targets. Kharazian said this dynamic means it has very much become a buyer's market. Meta and Nvidia are also introducing enterprise offerings with pretty cheap models or open source models, alongside open model companies from China and the United States and a company called Jev, a lightweight tool for choosing between a few predetermined outputs, that is increasingly among the top performers on Ramp. Companies are also getting better at being thrifty, using defaults that prevent usage of very expensive models for long-running tasks, imposing budgets on employees, and offloading some spend from standard and light models to even cheaper light models via routers.

Valuations and investor assumptions shift

Bloomberg reported Friday that Anthropic's potential valuation sank from the $2 trillion estimated in early October to just $1.2 to $1.3 trillion, and the company is also reportedly expected to receive a high "junk" rating from credit agencies. OpenAI also lowered its proposed valuation to $1.25 trillion from $1.4 trillion and slashed its latest fundraising goals by about $10 billion. Kharazian said Ramp's dataset likely informs many investor concerns. He said many assumptions about the trajectory of AI spend are starting to break down, because companies can use more AI but use it for less. Notion co-founder Akshay Kothari recently posted internal data that matched Ramp's insights, saying "tokens go brr. Costs go ahhh." Kharazian is skeptical that personal agents, which are "not as economically productive as coding," will provide the boost the industry needs for nonstop growth, even though OpenAI, SpaceXAI, Meta, and startups like Instinct have released their own personal agents. The hope among investors is that another revolution will drive further spend, but Kharazian said that based on what can be observed today, AI spend has started to slow down.

Sources: TechCrunch