New data from Ramp’s AI Index reveals that a small group of “AI‑pilled” companies now spend about $7,500 per employee each month on AI tools and compute. These firms use AI across a number of internal tasks, racking up bills for subscriptions, API access, usage costs, and more.
Ramp is (ironically) an AI company whose models purportedly simplify firms’ financial operations. Using “aggregated and anonymized card and billpay spend” from over 70,000 US businesses, Ramp determined that the top 1% of this cohort spends $7,449 per employee per month on AI. For the top 10%, that figure sits around $611, while the median allocates a far more modest $11.38 per employee per month to AI. Ramp’s lead economist, Ara Kharazian, likens this last price point to an enterprise subscription to ChatGPT or Claude.
For the most AI‑pilled firms (as Kharazian calls them), AI spend per worker remains below a typical US software engineer’s monthly pay. Still, such a lofty AI bill can’t be ignored. Ramp reports that power users are increasing their AI spending by double digits each month, even as most companies keep their budgets relatively modest.
It’s important to note that the data Ramp acquired from 70,000-odd companies was accessible to it because those companies work with Ramp. This could easily suggest that these companies are more AI-friendly than other firms could be, skewing the data a bit. In other words, Ramp’s $7,500 figure likely reflects outliers rather than a new norm across the board.
