Ramp says AI token spend barely grew in August and September

The teams buying the most AI eased up in late summer, even as they used more of it. TechCrunch reported Ramp's latest AI index today. The payment-card and spend-management firm says token spend across its customer base grew just 1.5 percent across August and September.

The month before had been different. July had seen a 42 percent month-on-month jump in AI token spend, TechCrunch says. The two-month stall was followed by an 8.9 percent rebound from 23 September to 23 October, Ramp's figures show.

Who stalled

Ramp splits its customers into cohorts by AI spend. The slowdown was concentrated in the top one percent. These companies spent close to $10,000 per employee per month at the summer peak, then dropped slightly below it. Ramp's lead economist Ara Kharazian told TechCrunch that almost all AI spend in the index is from venture-backed tech companies.

The top 10 percent of firms spent between $600 and $1,000 per employee per month. The median firm in the index spent $12 to $15 per employee per month. The stall sits almost entirely inside the top one percent. The rest of the index moved less.

Prices fell faster than use grew

Token usage in the index kept rising while total spend stayed flat. That gap points at pricing as the cause, with demand still strong. Anthropic cut its enterprise prices this autumn, TechCrunch says. Ramp estimates that those cuts reduced Anthropic's revenue growth by about $600 million. OpenAI made similar moves.

Bloomberg's estimated valuation for Anthropic fell from $2 trillion in early October to $1.2 to $1.3 trillion, TechCrunch reports. OpenAI's estimated valuation fell from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion over the same period. Anthropic now carries a high junk credit rating ahead of its planned IPO.

What this does and does not say

Ramp's panel is its own customers. These are firms that use the Ramp card and bill management platform, which skews toward venture-backed tech. Kharazian said as much. So the index is not a count of AI spend across the whole economy.

The data also does not say whether Anthropic or OpenAI alone lost share. TechCrunch frames the stall as market-wide at the top. If a reader wants per-vendor numbers, they are not in the report.

The pattern a buyer should watch for is simple. Token use grew while spending stayed flat. That means the price per token fell faster than teams added usage. A team planning an AI line item for next year should budget for prices falling again.

The pattern a seller should watch for is also simple. The heaviest paying cohort hit a soft ceiling near $10,000 per employee per month. Any team building an AI product for that cohort now has a new test. The next dollar must buy more than the last one did.

Source

• TechCrunch, Ramp data shows AI spending stalling just as Anthropic nears its IPO, by Rebecca Bellan, the primary source.