AI Fact or Fiction: The Fable Ban, Tokenmaxxing, Saaspocolypse — With Ara Kharazian

TL;DR

• 1

  Anthropic is now ahead of OpenAI in Ramp's business data: Kharazian says 41% of US firms on Ramp use Anthropic versus 39.5% using OpenAI, with Anthropic still growing while OpenAI is relatively flat.

• 2

  Government pressure may have boosted Anthropic's brand: After the DoD labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk earlier in the spring, adoption still accelerated, partly because businesses did not take the warning seriously and partly because exceptions undercut the government's credibility.

• 3

  AI spend is exploding, but most companies are still spending very little: Token spend per business is up 15x since January 2025, yet the median firm spends only $11 per employee per month on AI, while the top 10% spend $611 and the top 1% spend $7,449.

• 4

  'Tokenmaxxing' is overstated because firms want control, not just lower prices: Businesses are still increasing AI spend month over month, up 14% last month, but the bigger complaint is that OpenAI and Anthropic give admins too little visibility and control over runaway token usage.

• 5

  DeepSeek and open source are growing, but still from a tiny base: Only about 5% of firms on Ramp use open-source platforms, up from 1% last year, and DeepSeek's recent spike is notable but likely fragile if OpenAI and Anthropic respond with more price cuts.

• 6

  The SaaS apocalypse is not in the data yet: Traditional software is still mostly bought on seat-based contracts, metered usage is under 5%, and even AI-native threats are more likely to come from new vertical products like Attio than from companies simply replacing software with OpenAI or Anthropic.