# Anthropic pulls ahead as AI spend slows

Canonical: https://brew.new/browse/templates/email/pt1_k97z3gedhhz74ykfskd7sq8hnd8fdkn7

Brand: ramp.com
Category: newsletter

![Preview of Anthropic pulls ahead as AI spend slows](https://cdn.brew.new/email-preview-466810b2432063b3-tracking_r57mjkekgyhmj0mbqtx51f003n8fcr46-1790785247027.png)

## Email content

Ramp

September 2026

Ramp News

The AI Index

Where AI adoption is cracking

📉 Anthropic pulls ahead as AI spend cools

Anthropic now leads 43.8% of U.S. businesses to OpenAI’s 39.8%, even as the boom shows cracks: per-employee spend among the top 1% of firms fell from $7,976 to $7,205 in a single month.

💼 AI isn’t killing entry-level hiring

At companies making the biggest AI bets, headcount grew 10% over two years, and entry-level hiring grew even faster, up 12%. The "AI took the jobs" story doesn’t hold up in the data.

💸 Token prices just collapsed 41%

Effective token pricing fell from $1.15 in March to $0.68 today, and frontier models like Opus, Fable, and Sol lost share as companies default to cheaper alternatives, down to 45% of usage from 53% in August.

Spend signals

Follow the AI money

🖥️ The GPU buyers propping up the AI boom

Just 9.8% of Ramp’s SaaS customers pay a GPU compute vendor, compared with 78.4% who pay for an AI application. Yet that small group spends nearly 80% as much as the entire AI-app market combined.

🛡️ How to actually use AI safely

After 700 AI agents escaped test isolation in the Hugging Face incident, enterprises are rushing to buy security software from vendors like DepthFirst and Antithesis. Ramp’s playbook shows accountants save 7.5 days on close with AI, but only 25% of teams are training on it.

📣 AI’s new marketing playbook: influencers

AI and software companies now drive 28.2% of all creator ad spend, up 3.75x since 2023. Anthropic’s consumer pivot, including Claude Cowork and a Super Bowl ad, tracks with its enterprise share gains.

🧑‍💻 Your best hire might bring the software too

Word-of-mouth still drives 85% of tool adoption, but senior hires carrying a niche tool (under 5% market share) are 5x more likely to get it adopted at their new company.

Fresh data, delivered

every Tuesday at 9AM EST

Every Leading Indicators story starts with real purchase data from 70,000+ Ramp businesses, not guesswork. See what's coming before it's consensus.

Subscribe for free

Learn live

Free trainings coming up

📈 Financial Modeling Fundamentals for the Age of AI

Tue, Oct 6 | 1:00-2:00 PM ET

Christian Wattig, FP&A Program Director at the Wharton School, breaks down what makes a financial model actually hold up: choosing the right approach (ROI, NPV, IRR), handling risk, and using AI with ARIMA to build a real statistical baseline.

📊 The Go-To Guide for Predictable Finance KPIs

Wed, Oct 14 | 1:00-2:00 PM ET

Oana Labes shows how to build a measurement system that predicts performance instead of just reporting it, connecting operational and financial signals so leadership can act earlier.

🔐 “How Did Our AI Tool Get Access to That?”

Thu, Oct 15 | 1:00-2:00 PM ET

CFO advisor Lauren Pearl and Glenn Hopper, Head of AI at VAi Consulting, break down real AI security headlines and the practical steps to keep your team from becoming the next one.

Playstore

Appstore

Ramp Homepage

Ramp LinkedIn

Ramp X

Get the Ramp app

Ramp Business Corporation

28 West 23rd Street

New York, New York

Unsubscribe

[Open and remix this design](https://brew.new/browse/templates/email/pt1_k97z3gedhhz74ykfskd7sq8hnd8fdkn7)

[Browse email designs](https://brew.new/browse/templates)