Ramp Data Shows Business AI Spending Flattened in August as Token Prices Fall
Payment company Ramp's spending data across 70,000 firms shows AI adoption grew just 0.4% in August, reaching 56% of its customers, while AI spend per employee at the top 1% of firms fell nearly 10% to $7,205. Average token costs have dropped to $0.68 per million tokens from a March peak of $1.15 as OpenAI and Anthropic cut prices, and volume growth has not yet offset the cuts. A US Census survey showing only 22% business AI adoption suggests Ramp's tech-heavy client base may overstate the broader market.
Skynet Chance (-0.02%): Softening commercial revenue could constrain the capital fueling the frontier-model race, marginally reducing the pace of unchecked capability buildout. The effect is small and possibly seasonal rather than a structural change in risk.
Skynet Date (+0 days): Weaker-than-expected revenue growth against enormous infrastructure commitments slightly pushes back the financing runway for the most aggressive scaling efforts. This is a modest, potentially transient deceleration signal.
AGI Progress (-0.01%): The article concerns commercial monetization rather than model capability, but sustained revenue softness would pressure the compute budgets that underwrite frontier research. No technical setback is reported.
AGI Date (+0 days): If token price cuts are not offset by volume and customers migrate to older cheaper models, labs recoup training costs more slowly, which could marginally slow the reinvestment cycle behind larger training runs.
<< All AI news for September 9, 2026
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