More Than Half of Businesses Paid for Artificial Intelligence Products According to September 2026 Data

According to September 2026 data from the Ramp AI Index, more than half of all businesses have paid for an artificial intelligence product or service. Following the public launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, adoption rates experienced a significant surge and have continued to rise steadily since then. Based on corporate spending data from companies, this index has been added to the FRED data series.

In calculating its adoption index, Ramp uses corporate spending on the services of artificial intelligence companies. According to the data, while the artificial intelligence adoption rate has been climbing across all businesses regardless of size, this trend is spreading most rapidly among large and medium-sized enterprises. Small-scale businesses, while registering steady growth, lag behind the other two groups.

Rather than the size of the businesses, the sector in which they operate plays a much more decisive role. While the information sector, encompassing areas such as software and publishing, has recorded the highest adoption rates since 2023, the finance and insurance sector closely follows this area. Ordered by decreasing adoption rates, other sectors include manufacturing, retail trade, health care and social assistance, construction, and accommodation and food services.

Examined on a provider basis, because businesses can obtain products and services from multiple providers, the rates do not directly mirror the overall total. Although OpenAI achieved a major breakthrough in the early months of 2023 and continued its climb throughout 2025, it has recently leveled off. Meanwhile, Anthropic has steadily gained ground starting from 2024 to become the top-paid provider in early 2026. xAI holds a much smaller share compared to these two providers.

These presented data series do not reflect employees' use of free artificial intelligence tools like Google Gemini, or built-in artificial intelligence features within other software, nor do they reflect the usage intensity of these tools.