@arakharazian.bsky.social
Lead Economist at Ramp ramp.com/data
@arakharazian.bsky.socialNEW: AI Spend FALLS in the latest Ramp AI Index.
Price cuts, in addition to cheaper and more efficient models at standard and lite levels, are pushing down the cost of using AI.
And it’s not open-source. This decline is driven by competition between OpenAI + Anthropic.
@arakharazian.bsky.socialMy take: it's not because of open Chinese models. It's model wars. Price cuts + a growing share of spend is shifting to standard and lite models (which are already cheaper) over the frontier.
@arakharazian.bsky.socialNEW from Ramp AI Index: AI spend *declined* among the top 1% of businesses spending on AI. In August, the top 1% of businesses spent $7.2K per employee per month, down 10% from a July peak ($8K). We're seeing more cracks in the AI thesis as a number of drivers show spend topping out.
@arakharazian.bsky.socialWhat happens in a market correction? All these companies are highly correlated, and an increasing share of our economy is invested in them. Especially as we approach blockbuster IPOs for OpenAI and Anthropic.
@arakharazian.bsky.socialThis is a level of concentration risk unseen in any other software category we track. The companies in the top 1% skew heavily toward the tech sector and AI products and services.
@arakharazian.bsky.socialNew from Ramp data: the latest threat to the AI trade. AI companies' revenues are heavily dependent on a small set of customers. 80% of OpenAI and Anthropic's enterprise revenues come from 1% of their customers, and it's not getting better.
