An Nvidia executive recently said that the cost of compute is now greater than the salaries of his employees. Last week, Mercor’s CEO said the startup is spending more on tokens for internal agents than on employee headcount.
As enterprises blow through their token budgets, a big question is: Are companies actually spending more on AI than on humans?
Not quite yet, according to fresh research from the Ramp AI Index, which measures the adoption rate of AI among American businesses. The top 1% of firms — which Ramp describes as “AI-pilled” — are spending $7,500 per employee per month. Whether you think that’s a lot or a little depends on your perspective, but it’s certainly not more than the roughly $16,000 per month the average software engineer makes.
And those are just the power users. The top 10% spend about $611 monthly per employee, and the median only spend about $11.38, or about the cost of a seat on an enterprise plan.
That said, despite pressures, AI spending is still rising. Among the AI-pilled firms, spend grew 14.1% per employee last month. It’s not yet clear if that trend will continue. The top 1% of firms tend to mix and match, opting to bounce between multiple frontier models and platforms that give them access to cheaper open source models.