Spending on AI tokens rose only 1.5% in August–September — TechCrunch
Corporate spending on tokens for artificial intelligence systems rose by only 1.5% in August and September, although AI usage volumes continued to increase. This is according to data from the Ramp platform, as reported by TechCrunch. By comparison, in July, token spending increased by 42% from the previous month.
Spending by the most active users
Ramp chief economist Ara Kharazian said the slowdown is noticeable among the 1% of companies that use AI most actively. During the summer, they spent nearly $10,000 per employee, while in August and September the figure fell slightly below that level. In his assessment, changes in spending by this small group may affect the revenue of AI model providers, despite increasing usage volumes.
At the same time, spending by median companies and companies in the top decile for AI spending was growing. The median company spends between $12 and $15 per employee per month on AI, while companies in the top 10% spend between $600 and $1,000. Kharazian believes that not all industries will be able to reach the spending level of the most active 1%: demand for AI agents for programming is high in the technology and financial sectors, but medical offices or car dealerships may not need such spending.
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Price competition and cost control
According to Kharazian, the slowdown is not related to declining demand, since AI usage volumes are growing. He cited price competition as one factor: in September, OpenAI halved API prices for GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, while Anthropic also significantly reduced prices for Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5. Companies are also offering discounts to corporate clients.
In addition, businesses have learned to reduce spending on models: they set budget limits for employees, do not use expensive models for lengthy tasks, and redirect some requests to cheaper models. At the same time, from September 23 to October 23, token spending accelerated again, rising by 8.9%.
Against the backdrop of these data, Bloomberg reported a decline in Anthropic's potential valuation from $2 trillion at the beginning of October to $1.2–$1.3 trillion. OpenAI, according to the agency, also reduced its proposed valuation from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion and cut the target size of its latest fundraising round by about $10 billion.
