TechCrunch Reports Ramp Data Shows Business AI Spending Has Stalled

Token spend grew only 1.5% across August and September even as usage rose, because AI prices fell.

Business spending on AI model usage flattened in late summer, according to TechCrunch, which reported on data from the spend-management company Ramp. Token spend (the fee paid for the text an AI model reads and writes) grew 1.5% combined across August and September. In July it had grown 42% from the month before.

Usage did not fall. Ramp's own AI Index shows token volume rose 37.1% in the week ending October 23 compared with the same week a month earlier, while spending rose 8.9%. The blended price per million tokens across OpenAI and Anthropic fell 26.8%, to $0.56 from $0.76. TechCrunch reports that Ramp's lead economist, Ara Kharazian, ties the slowdown to price cuts, cheaper open-source and lightweight models, and firms setting budgets and routing work to cheaper models.

The spread between companies is wide. TechCrunch says median firms on Ramp spend $12 to $15 per employee per month on AI tokens, while the top 10% spend $600 to $1,000. Ramp also reports that 55.9% of its businesses paid for AI in September, with Anthropic at 43.8% and OpenAI at 40.6%.

Kharazian told TechCrunch the slowdown reflects pricing and cost discipline, not weak demand. Ramp notes its token sample is not representative of its total AI spend.