AI spend per employee slumped at top firms in August — summer doldrums or a warning sign?

The adoption of AI tools by businesses slowed in August, according to spending data at 70,000 companies collected by the payments company Ramp. The latest survey shows 56% of Ramp customers paid for AI products in August, rising just 0.4% from the month before.

This isn’t the first time Ramp’s metrics have shown adoption slowing down. Last year, the company’s AI index showed little to no growth in adoption between August and October, only to have growth pick up again as the year finished.

Still, the extreme pace of the AI buildout means even small slowdowns can be cause for concern. The gobsmacking investment in AI infrastructure by frontier labs and hyperscalers rests on the hope that there is plenty of revenueout there to pay it back. Thus far, usage has grown steeply, particularly as software engineers adopted agentic coding tools — but if that adoption slows down, revenue...

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