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

The Ramp AI Index, tracking AI spending among business customers of financial services provider Ramp, rose 1.65 percent month over month in October 2026 to a new high, with the top one percent of companies by AI spending paying a median of $10,200 per employee per month (up nine percent) while a typical company spent just $16.32. Spending on OpenAI grew 2.1 percent month over month versus 0.5 percent for Anthropic, and the average price per million processed text tokens dropped 21 percent last month. Software development teams accounted for 72 percent of tracked AI spending, while customer support's share climbed from 0.8 percent in June to 13.3 percent in October.