Businesses in Ramp's token dataset used more artificial intelligence tokens in August and September while their spending barely moved, showing why slower dollar growth alone cannot establish a decline in measured use.
Ramp said token volumes rose over the two months even as token spending recorded virtually no growth. The company said AI spending reached a new high in early October, 1.5% above its previous peak in August.
Lower prices help explain how customers could use more tokens without a comparable rise in spending. Ramp's effective price index was $0.68 per million tokens in early September, down 41% from $1.15 in March. Ramp Lead Economist Ara Kharazian attributed the decline in the blended price to cheaper leading models and gains in model efficiency and quality.
Kharazian said buyers were in a favorable position to negotiate and AI labs might offer discounts. His account points to lower costs for customers and pricing pressure on providers, although the figures do not show what any individual business paid.
Paid AI adoption among Ramp businesses continued to rise. In September, 55.9% made an observed payment for an AI product or service, up 0.62 percentage points from August. Anthropic received payments from 43.8% of Ramp businesses and OpenAI from 40.6%. A business can pay both providers.
Apollo Partner and Chief Economist Torsten Slok interpreted the spending slowdown as a sign that customers respond strongly to compute prices. He argued that buyers might limit use or move to cheaper models. Ramp's finding that token volumes rose during the same period shows that its measured customers did not collectively use fewer tokens in those two months.
Ramp had raised the possibility of a seasonal slowdown in its September report, citing spending declines in past Novembers and Decembers. Its October report said rising token volumes made seasonality an unlikely explanation for the latest spending pattern.
The token figures cover businesses using Ramp's Token Spend Management product, a subset of its customers. The broader payment measure has different limits: The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said it does not capture free tools, AI features bundled with other software or how intensively businesses use them.
