New research from the Ramp AI Index shows that the most AI-intensive companies in the US — the top 1%, described as "AI-pilled" — are spending $7,500 per employee per month on AI tools and compute. That figure is significant, but still well below the roughly $16,000 per month the average software engineer earns. The top 10% of companies spend about $611 per employee monthly, while the median company spends just $11.38 — roughly the cost of a single enterprise plan seat. Among the top 1%, AI spending grew 14.1% per employee in the past month alone. These heaviest users tend to mix multiple frontier models alongside cheaper open-source alternatives. The data comes as high-profile executives have been making increasingly dramatic claims about AI costs: an Nvidia executive recently said compute costs now exceed employee salaries at his company, and Mercor's CEO said the startup spends more on AI tokens for internal agents than on its entire headcount. The Ramp data suggests those cases remain outliers for now — but the gap is narrowing at the top end of the market.
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