US corporate AI spending reached a new high in October 2026, but growth was modest. The Ramp AI Index, which tracks AI spending among business customers of the financial services provider Ramp, rose 1.65 percent month over month.
According to Ramp, the heaviest AI users spent more. The top one percent of companies by AI spending paid a median of $10,200 per employee per month, up nine percent. A typical company spent $16.32, an increase of less than a dollar from the previous month.
Ramp says its data reflects market trends but is not necessarily representative. The index uses payment data from more than 85,000 US companies. Free AI tools and usage through personal accounts may not appear in the figures. Ramp's customer base skews toward growth-oriented, tech-savvy companies that are larger than US businesses overall, so the report suggests AI adoption is likely overstated.
Business spending on OpenAI grew 2.1 percent month over month. Spending on Anthropic grew 0.5 percent. Ramp chief economist Ara Kharazian says the structural risks he identified in an earlier analysis persist. He states that one percent of companies drive 80 percent of revenue for OpenAI and Anthropic. That top tier is mostly ven