# Ramp: US business AI spending hit a record in October, but grew just 1.65%

> A typical company spends $16.32 a month, the top 1% spend $10,200 per employee, customer support is the fastest-growing buyer, and token prices fell 21%.

- URL: https://devisdead.ai/news/ramp-us-business-ai-spending-hit-a-record-in-october-but-grew-just-1-65
- Published: 2026-11-11T20:19:43Z
- Author: DevIsDead Newsroom
- Section: Startups & Money
- Tags: ramp, ai spending, openai, anthropic, enterprise
- Originally reported by The Decoder (https://the-decoder.com/us-corporate-ai-spending-hits-a-new-high-in-october-but-growth-slows-to-1-65-percent/).

Business spending on AI in the US reached a new high in October, but only just, Matthias Bastian reports for [The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com/us-corporate-ai-spending-hits-a-new-high-in-october-but-growth-slows-to-1-65-percent/). The Ramp AI Index, which tracks what Ramp's business customers pay for AI, rose 1.65% from September.

## A tale of two spenders

- **The top 1%** of companies by AI spend paid a median $10,200 per employee per month, up 9%.
- **A typical company** spent $16.32, up by less than a dollar.

Ramp's chief economist Ara Kharazian says 1% of companies bring in 80% of OpenAI's and Anthropic's revenue, and those are mostly VC-funded companies in finance, tech and technical services. Beyond those sectors, adoption is barely spreading.

## OpenAI vs. Anthropic

Spending on OpenAI grew 2.1% month over month, versus 0.5% for Anthropic. Anthropic still leads on adoption at 44.8% of companies, up 1.1 points, with OpenAI flat at 40.6%. Across the board, 56.8% of companies now pay for AI, a new high. SpacexSI grew fastest of any software company in the data, at 2.2%, probably thanks to Cursor, which it owns.

## Who's buying

Software teams made up 72% of tracked AI spend in October, down from summer highs. Customer support and success grew fastest, from 0.8% of spending in June to 13.3%, likely because of support chatbots. Those uses tend to run on cheaper, faster models, which could mean thinner margins for the labs, although the priciest models (Opus, Fable, Sol and Astra, by Kharazian's list) still edged up to 69.5% of spend.

## Cheaper by the token

The average price per million text tokens fell 21% last month. Usage is growing faster than spending, pushed by competition between OpenAI and Anthropic and by open-weight models from China.

## Caveats

Ramp's data covers more than 85,000 US companies, but it misses free tools and personal accounts, and its customers skew larger, more tech-savvy and growth-focused than US business overall, so adoption is probably overstated.

**[Scoreboard](/scoreboard) update:** Draw. AI spending hits a record, but most companies still spend about $16 a month on it.

Stay undead.