Business spending on AI tokens rose only 1.5% across August and September even as the number of tokens used kept climbing, after growing 42% in July alone, according to Ramp lead economist Ara Kharazian, who spoke with TechCrunch. Kharazian blames competition rather than weak demand, since OpenAI halved some API prices in September and Anthropic cut its own, which Anthropic said in a filing cost it roughly $600 million in revenue growth. Spending by the biggest 1% of AI buyers also slipped under the roughly $10,000 a month per employee they reached over the summer, as heavy users set budgets and route work to cheaper models. Token spend picked back up 8.9% in the month through October 23, but Kharazian expects the pressure on spending to hold.
