AI’s biggest spenders may be its least typical customers.
That matters when founders use today’s spending to imagine tomorrow’s market.

Ramp’s October report says 1% of firms account for 80% of observed spending on OpenAI and Anthropic.

Yet 55.9% of businesses in its sample paid for AI in September.

Many businesses are buying.
A small group accounts for most of the spending on those two providers.

The obvious question is whether the biggest buyers will keep paying.
The less obvious question is what would make the smaller buyers spend more.

Do they need better models?
Or help connecting AI to their systems, changing a workflow and demonstrating a return?

Those are different problems. They create different businesses.

A product designed around the needs of an intensive AI user may not solve what prevents an ordinary business from getting value.

For founders, that is a reason to study modest-paying customers, not dismiss them.

Find out what they tried, where progress stopped and what outcome would justify a larger budget.

Ramp’s data cannot tell us whether those customers will deepen their usage.
It measures spending in its observed sample, not ROI across the economy.

But it gives us a useful distinction.

The biggest buyers show where money is flowing today.

Understanding what holds the smaller buyers back may reveal where to build next.


Krishna Lakamsani | Serial Entrepreneur | Investor | I write at the intersection of AI, capital, and the future of the human job market,
sharing my life lessons, reflections, and honest takes from the founder-investor's seat.