Ramp AI Index: Business AI Spend Rose 2% in October as OpenAI and Anthropic Growth Slowed

Context

Ramp is a corporate card and spend management company, and its AI Index tracks business spending on AI tools from its customers' transactions. Ara Kharazian is the economist who posts the index.

Deep dive

Ara Kharazian posted the October reading of the Ramp AI Index, saying business AI spend rose 2% in the month. He wrote that growth for both OpenAI and Anthropic fell to low single digits.

According to the post, engineering teams drove 72% of AI spending, followed by customer service and leadership. That pattern lines up with the heavy use of coding tools and agents inside companies.

Kharazian wrote that given this relatively modest growth in spend, and new competitive dynamics that may stick around, the market should look to new fronts in the AI trade. The post did not name which new fronts he meant.

The index reflects spending by businesses that use Ramp, so it captures a slice of the US corporate market rather than all AI revenue. It does not include consumer subscriptions or large enterprise contracts paid outside Ramp cards. Even so, it is one of the few regular public measures of how quickly companies are paying for AI tools.

What to expect next

Next month's index will show whether October was a pause or the start of a slower trend. Watch for whether OpenAI and Anthropic reports of revenue growth match what Ramp sees, especially as Anthropic heads into its IPO. A shift in spending toward other vendors, such as Google or newer agent companies, would be the competitive change Kharazian hints at.