AI-pilled firms spend $7,500 per employee monthly on AI

A top executive at Nvidia recently remarked that the cost of compute has overtaken employee salaries at his company. Just last week, the CEO of Mercor revealed that the startup now spends more on tokens for its internal AI agents than on its actual workforce. As businesses burn through their AI budgets at an accelerating pace, a critical question emerges: Are companies truly spending more on artificial intelligence than on their human employees?

Not exactly, according to the latest findings from the Ramp AI Index, which tracks how deeply American businesses are integrating AI into their operations. The top 1% of companies, which Ramp labels as “AI-pilled,” are shelling out roughly $7,500 per employee each month on AI tools and compute. While that figure might sound staggering, it still falls short of the average monthly salary for a software engineer, which sits around $16,000. Whether that gap feels wide or narrow depends entirely on your frame of reference.

Even among the most aggressive adopters, spending varies dramatically. The top 10% of firms spend about $611 per employee per month, while the median company allocates just $11.38, roughly the cost of a single seat on an enterprise AI plan. That places most organizations far from the frontier of heavy AI investment.

Nevertheless, pressure to increase spending persists. Among the most AI-pilled companies, per-employee AI costs grew by 14.1% last month alone. Whether this upward trajectory will hold remains uncertain. These top-tier firms tend to be strategic, blending multiple frontier models and leveraging platforms that offer cheaper, open-source alternatives. They are not simply throwing money at the problem; they are optimizing for value, which may or may not sustain the current spending spree.