‘AI-pilled’ firms spend $7,500 per employee each month on AI

<p id="speakable-summary" class="wp-block-paragraph">An Nvidia executive recently <a rel="nofollow" href="https://fortune.com/2026/04/28/nvidia-executive-cost-of-ai-is-greater-than-cost-of-employees/">said</a> that the cost of compute is now greater than the salaries of his employees. Last week, <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-startup-mercor-spends-more-on-tokens-than-payroll-2026-6">Mercor’s CEO said</a> the startup is spending more on tokens for internal agents than on employee headcount.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As enterprises <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/05/the-token-bill-comes-due-inside-the-industry-scramble-to-manage-ais-runaway-costs/">blow through their token budgets,</a> a big question is: Are companies actually spending more on AI than on humans?</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Not quite yet, according to <a rel="nofollow" href="https://econlab.substack.com/p/how-much-does-it-cost-to-be-ai-pilled">fresh research</a> from the Ramp AI Index, which measures the adoption rate of AI among American businesses. The top 1% of firms — which Ramp describes as “AI-pilled” — are spending $7,500 per employee per month. Whether you think that’s a lot or a little depends on your perspective, but it’s certainly not more than the roughly $16,000 per month the average software engineer makes. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And those are just the power users. The top 10% spend about $611 monthly per employee, and the median only spend about $11.38, or about the cost of a seat on an enterprise plan. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That said, despite pressures, AI spending is still rising. Among the AI-pilled firms, spend grew 14.1% per employee last month. It’s not yet clear if that trend will continue. The top 1% of firms tend to mix and match, opting to bounce between multiple frontier models and platforms that give them access to cheaper open-source models.</p>