Ramp: Corporate AI Spending Stalled in Late Summer as Token Use Rose

What happened

Ramp's new report shows corporate AI spending stalled in late summer: token spending grew just 1.5% across August and September, after a 42% month-on-month jump in July. October saw a re-acceleration, with token spending up 8.9% from Sep 23 to Oct 23, but Ramp lead economist Ara Kharazian said the headwinds on spending growth are strong and the era of hypergrowth may be over.

By cohort, the top 1% of firms — the heaviest AI spenders — stuttered slightly in August and September, coming in just below the roughly $10,000 per employee per month they hit at their summer peaks; median firms spend $12 to $15 per employee per month, and the top 10% spend $600 to $1,000. Growth among median and top-10% firms was not enough to make up the difference, and Kharazian said a slowdown among the top 1% alone was sufficient to slow revenue entirely, even as volumes rose.

Kharazian said the slowdown is not a demand problem but price competition: OpenAI cut API prices in half in September for GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, Anthropic cut prices for Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5 and said in a filing that the move cut revenue growth by about $600 million, and both companies have offered enterprise discounts to lock in spend. Internal data posted by Notion co-founder Akshay Kothari matched Ramp's findings. Kharazian said almost the entire spend on AI comes from venture-backed, high-growth tech companies, so if that cohort slows together, cascading effects could follow.

Key facts

1. Reported by: Ramp, Nov 6, 2026, via TechCrunch
2. August and September: token spending grew just 1.5% combined
3. July: token spending grew 42% month on month
4. October: token spending rose 8.9% from Sep 23 to Oct 23, a re-acceleration that did not restore the summer pace
5. Top firms: the top 1% of spenders stuttered slightly in August and September, just below their summer peak of about $10,000 per employee per month
6. Spending by cohort: median firms spend $12 to $15 per employee per month; the top 10% spend $600 to $1,000
7. Cause: price competition, not falling demand; usage volumes kept rising
8. OpenAI price cuts: API prices for GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna halved in September
9. Anthropic price cuts: prices for Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5 reduced; the company said in a filing that the move cut revenue growth by about $600 million
10. Corroboration and structure: internal data posted by Notion's co-founder matched Ramp's findings; Kharazian said almost all AI spending comes from venture-backed, high-growth tech companies