US companies hit record AI usage while spending keeps falling
Ramp transaction data shows model price cuts converting into usage growth, with AI spending falling since its July peak — a demand elasticity signal worth tracking.
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The Ramp AI Index from economist Ara Kharazian shows US companies' AI spending falling since it peaked in July, while usage climbed about 50 percent and hit a record high at the end of September.
The drop comes mostly from price cuts on top models and cheaper standard and lite models, which Kharazian attributes almost entirely to competition between OpenAI and Anthropic. In the last week of September, Anthropic took 51 percent of token spending and OpenAI 44.5 percent, with open-source models under 5 percent.
The index tracks transactions from more than 70,000 US companies, but covers only API spending, skews toward large AI customers, and draws token data from a subsample — worth keeping in mind when reading the numbers.