AI Token Spend Reportedly Rose 42% in July. Across August and September, It Rose 1.5%.

Businesses bought more AI tokens in August and September but spent almost no more, according to a published report on Ramp’s data, as the top 1% of spenders eased off before an October rebound.

Ramp lead economist Ara Kharazian says many assumptions about the trajectory of AI spend are starting to break down: companies can use more AI and spend less on it. Ramp’s index of the effective price per million tokens fell 41% from its March peak to $0.68 from $1.15 by early September. By The Denominator’s arithmetic, a dollar bought about 1.7 times as many tokens then as in March.

What did Ramp’s data show?

Token spend grew 42% in July and 1.5% across August and September, the report said, even as token volumes rose. Ramp’s October research letter says the pattern is not seasonal. Spend turned up again in October, rising 8.9% from Sept. 23 to Oct. 23.

Kharazian points to price declines at the frontier, along with efficiency gains, as the main driver. Buyers are also getting thriftier, he said, with per-employee budgets and routers that send work to cheaper models.

Who is driving the stall?

Ramp says 1% of firms drive 80% of spending on OpenAI and Anthropic, so their budgets set the total. That group spent $9,568 per employee per month in September, 3.1% below its July high of $9,873. Kharazian said a slowdown among those firms alone is enough to stall revenue at the two companies even as volumes rise.

Spending grew elsewhere, from far lower levels. Median firms spend $12 to $15 per employee a month and the top 10% spend $600 to $1,000, and neither group’s growth made up for the pullback at the top.

What does Anthropic’s filing say about price?

Anthropic’s amended IPO filing shows the squeeze from the seller’s side. Third-quarter revenue reached $17.0 billion, but price cuts on new model versions and discounts written into customer contracts took about $600 million off the gain that higher usage brought from the second quarter.

Anthropic says Opus 5.5 cut customers’ cost per task by about 40% against Opus 5, through a lower price and better efficiency together, and that lower costs per task drive more usage.

Do contracts protect spend?

The filing’s contractual discounts raise the question of whether committed deals lock spending in. Kharazian, who has spoken with businesses that signed or reviewed such deals with OpenAI and Anthropic, says they do not. The contracts rarely assume above-normal AI spend, he wrote, and where they do, the companies offer discounts off sticker prices.

Those discounts could contribute to price cuts without driving additional volume, he wrote.

Which price per million tokens does the fiscal 2027 AI forecast assume: the $1.15 March peak, or the $0.68 of early September?