Spending on artificial intelligence leveled off in late summer even as companies used more of it, according to new data from Ramp, a trend that arrives as Anthropic prepares for its IPO and could undercut investor expectations of sustained rapid growth. Ramp found that token spending rose just 1.5% across August and September, compared with 42% growth in July over the prior month.
Ara Kharazian, Ramp's lead economist, told TechCrunch that nearly all AI spending comes from venture-backed, high-growth technology companies. That concentration is manageable while spending rises, he said, but a market-driven slowdown would hit those companies at the same time and could set off cascading effects. Kharazian said the top 1% of firms, the heaviest AI users, slipped just below the $10,000 per employee they had reached at their summer peaks. A pullback in that group is enough to slow revenue overall even with rising volumes, he said.
Spending grew among median firms, at $12 to $15 per employee per month, and among the top 10%, at $600 to $1,000, but not enough to close the gap. Kharazian said it is unclear whether today's use cases will lift more companies to the $10,000 mark, noting that demand for AI coding agents in software and finance does not mean a doctor's office or a car dealership will spend that much. He said the era of hypergrowth may be over.
Ramp's October data showed a re-acceleration, with token spend up 8.9% from September 23 to October 23, but Kharazian said headwinds remain strong. He attributed the slowdown to competition rather than demand. OpenAI cut API prices in half for GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna in September, and Anthropic made significant reductions for Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5, a decision the company said in a recent filing cut revenue growth by about $600 million. Both companies have offered enterprise discounts meant to lock in spending that are in practice hitting revenue targets, he said.
Kharazian said cheap enterprise offerings from Meta and Nvidia, open models from China and the United States, and a lightweight tool called Jev are adding pressure. He said customers are also getting better at controlling costs, shifting work to cheaper models, setting budgets and routing lighter tasks to lower-cost options. Notion co-founder Akshay Kothari posted internal data that matched Ramp's findings.
Bloomberg reported Friday that Anthropic's potential valuation fell from the $2 trillion estimated in early October to $1.2 to $1.3 trillion, and that the company is expected to receive a high junk rating from credit agencies. OpenAI lowered its proposed valuation to $1.25 trillion from $1.4 trillion and cut its latest fundraising goals by about $10 billion. Kharazian said personal agents from OpenAI, SpaceXAI, Meta and startups such as Instinct may not drive the next spending wave, since they are less economically productive than coding.
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