Top Corporate AI Spenders Shell Out $7,400 Per Worker as Anthropic Edges Past OpenAI

Corporate investment in artificial intelligence is rapidly stratifying, with power users committing thousands of dollars per worker while the broader market proceeds at a cautious pace. According to the latest AI Index from corporate card provider Ramp, the top 1% of businesses spent a median of $7,400 per employee on AI tools in July.

The figures illustrate a massive gulf between deep adopters and typical corporate users. While the top tier spent heavily, the top 10% of businesses averaged a more modest $650 per employee. Across the broader economy, the median firm spent just $11.95 per worker, indicating that mainstream corporate deployment remains mostly confined to light experimentation and entry-level subscriptions.

Anthropic Takes the Lead

The index also pointed to shifting vendor dynamics among enterprise buyers. Anthropic led corporate adoption during the period, capturing 43.5% of business accounts, compared to 39.7% for OpenAI. The shift marks a significant milestone for Anthropic, whose Claude family of models has found strong traction among software engineering and technical workflow teams.

Total outlays across business accounts continued to climb overall, defying expectations that plunging API costs and free open-source releases from Meta and others would compress top-line vendor revenues. Instead, organizations that identify high-value use cases appear willing to increase their total expenditure to secure proprietary model capabilities.

For enterprise software vendors and venture investors, the divergence in per-seat spending indicates that AI adoption is following an uneven trajectory. Rather than sweeping across entire corporate workforces, AI budgets are concentrating heavily within specialized, high-leverage divisions where direct productivity gains easily justify four-figure monthly outlays per seat.