Ramp data shows AI spending trails human labor costs

Fresh research from the Ramp AI Index, which measures the adoption rate of artificial intelligence among American businesses, provides new data on how corporate AI budgets compare to human payroll. The index reveals that the top 1% of firms—which Ramp describes as “AI-pilled,” a term used for the top 1% of firms by AI adoption—are spending $7,500 per employee per month on AI. While this represents a large software expense, the figure remains below the cost of human technical talent. For comparison, the average software engineer makes roughly $16,000 per month.

The data highlights a steep drop-off in AI expenditures outside of this top bracket of users. Across the broader landscape of American companies, monthly AI spending per employee is distributed across distinct tiers:

• The top 1% (“AI-pilled” firms) spend $7,500 per employee.
• The top 10% of firms spend about $611 per employee.
• The median spend is about $11.38 per employee.

This median figure of about $11.38 suggests that for most American enterprises, AI integration is currently limited to basic software licenses, roughly equivalent to the cost of a single seat on an enterprise software plan. Rather than deploying their own models, the typical business is simply paying for standard user access.

Despite the low median spend, overall investment in AI continues to expand. Among the AI-pilled firms, AI spending grew 14.1% per employee last month. This upward trajectory aligns with recent anecdotal reports from technology executives who suggest that machine costs are beginning to rival human payrolls in specific high-tech environments. These reports have fueled questions about whether companies are spending more on AI than on human labor. For instance, an Nvidia executive recently stated that the cost of compute is now greater than the salaries of his employees. Similarly, last week, Mercor’s CEO stated the startup is spending more on tokens—defined as units of text processed by AI models—for internal agents than on employee headcount.

However, the Ramp AI Index indicates that these extreme cost structures remain outliers. For the vast majority of American businesses, human labor remains the dominant operational expense, even as AI tools find a foothold in corporate workflows.

Why it matters

The Ramp AI Index provides a necessary benchmark for enterprise AI spending, helping clarify the ongoing debate over whether AI costs are currently outpacing human labor expenses in American firms.