AI Spend Is Wildly Bimodal: Top-1% Firms Spend $7,400 per Employee While the Median Firm Spends $11.95
EconLab / Ramp AI Index·medium signal
Ramp's August 2026 index reports a median of $7,400 per employee on AI among the top 1% of businesses, $650 per employee for the top 10%, and just $11.95 per employee at the median firm — a roughly 620x gap between the top percentile and the median. The distribution suggests AI spend is currently concentrated in a small cohort running agentic workloads rather than broadly diffused seat licenses. Builders pitching per-seat pricing into the median firm are competing for a budget of about a dollar a month per head.