Companies with the largest investments in artificial intelligence spend up to $7,500 per employee

Spending on artificial intelligence in US companies is increasing, reaching $7500 per month per employee, which is still lower than the average salary of a programmer. The latest research indicates increased investment in AI amid growing adoption.

Companies that actively implement artificial intelligence spend significant resources on it, but these amounts are still lower than the average monthly salary of a software engineer. Specifically, 1% of companies with the highest expenses spend an average of $7500 per employee monthly. Currently, this amount is less than half the average monthly salary of a programmer in the US, which is approximately $16,000.

The Ramp AI Index study shows that even in the top 10% of companies by spending volume, average spending on AI reaches $611 per employee per month. For other study participants, median costs are approximately $11.38, according to corporate rate plans for artificial intelligence services.

NVIDIA’s Vice President of Applied Deep Learning, Brian Catanzaro, notes that spending on technology already exceeds the payroll. For example, the startup Mercor reported spending more on tokens for its AI agents than on staff.

TechCrunch points out that leading companies use combined means – a combination of commercial models and open-source solutions. At the same time, AI spending is increasing – in the leader group, spending per employee increased by 14.1% last month.

The discussion around the implementation of artificial intelligence does not subside. Previously, Anthropic expressed the opinion that AI developers should pre-discuss methods to slow down or temporarily halt the development of systems if their improvement outpaces human control. According to Anthropic, the emergence of systems capable of independently creating their own versions may open new risks and become a critical stage in technological progress.