Business spending on AI tools slowed in August, according to data from payments company Ramp covering 70,000 customers, prompting debate over whether this reflects seasonal summer lulls or an early warning sign for the sector. Only 56% of Ramp's customers paid for AI products in August, up just 0.4% on the previous month, and spend per employee at the top 1% of firms fell nearly 10%. The figures matter because the huge infrastructure investment by AI labs and hyperscalers depends on continued revenue growth, and any slowdown in adoption could undermine that bet.

Ramp economist Ara Kharazian noted that average token costs have fallen to $0.68 per million tokens from a 2026 peak of $1.15 in March, as OpenAI and Anthropic compete on price, but this has not yet been offset by higher usage volumes, and many businesses are opting for older, cheaper models such as ChatGPT 5.6-Terra and Sonnet rather than newer frontier releases. A separate US Census Bureau survey found only 22% of businesses report using AI, suggesting Ramp's tech-heavy customer base may overstate wider adoption trends. Just 6.4% of AI-spending firms used model-serving or inference platforms in August, and last year similar Ramp data showed a comparable summer slowdown before growth resumed later in the year.