Anthropic’s Top 1% of Tracked Customers Drove 46% of August Spending

Anthropic’s top 1% of tracked customers accounted for 46% of observed spending on the company in August 2026, underscoring concentrated demand as spending on AI tokens stayed nearly flat for two months.

That share was up from 25% in August 2025. A separate payment-activity sample covering more than 70,000 U.S. companies showed that the top 1% of firms accounted for about 80% of observed spending on Anthropic and OpenAI. Those figures describe spending within tracked groups, not either company’s total enterprise revenue.

Spending on AI tokens was nearly flat in August and September 2026 even as token volume rose. It reached a new high in early October, but was only 1.5% above its August peak. Rising usage alongside nearly unchanged spending is consistent with lower average prices offsetting some of the additional volume.

Anthropic’s daily token price index was above $1.70 in mid-September and settled at $0.80 per million tokens on Oct. 21. OpenAI’s index settled at $0.44 per million tokens that day. These are daily index readings, not fixed prices.

Paid AI adoption among tracked businesses rose 0.62 percentage points in September to 55.9%, following a 0.40-point increase in August. Adoption’s monthly increase accelerated even as token spending remained nearly flat.

The figures leave an open question for AI infrastructure investment: whether lower token prices and heavier use can generate enough additional revenue, profit or cost savings to support continued spending on computing capacity. Spending and price trends alone do not establish those returns.