US Companies Cut AI Spending for First Time Since Early 2026

According to a September 2026 report by financial firm Ramp, US companies that have been the heaviest spenders on AI services have reduced their spending for the first time since the start of 2026. After a steady rise from $2,930 per employee per month in January 2026 to a peak of $7,976 in July, spending dropped by 9.7% to $7,205 in September. Ramp attributes this decline to a combination of developer summer vacations, which reduce token consumption, and recent price reductions by AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The average price per million tokens fell from $1.15 in March 2026 to $0.68. Additionally, fewer companies are now using frontier models (down from 53% to 45% since August), while more are adopting standard models like GPT-5.6 Terra and Claude Sonnet, which are cheaper.