AI-driven companies spend $7,500 per employee per month on AI

An Nvidia executive recently said that the cost of computing is now greater than his employees’ salaries. Last week, Mercor’s CEO said the startup was spending more on internal agent tokens than on headcount.

As companies spend their token budgets, the big question is: Are companies actually spending more on AI than they do on humans?

Not yet, according to new research by the Ramp AI Index, which measures the rate of AI adoption among US companies. The top 1% of companies – which Ramp describes as “AI-driven” – spend $7,500 per employee per month. Whether you think that’s a lot or a little depends on your point of view, but it’s definitely no more than the approximately $16,000 per month that the average software engineer earns.

These are just power users. The top 10% spend about $611 per month per employee, and the average spends only about $11.38, or about the cost of a seat on an enterprise plan.

However, despite the pressures, spending on AI is still on the rise. Among companies that rely on AI, spending rose 14.1% per employee last month. It is not yet clear whether this trend will continue. The top 1% of companies tend to mix and match, choosing to move between multiple frontier models and platforms that give them access to cheaper open source models.