Ramp AI Index

Methodology

Ramp AI Index measures the adoption rate of artificial intelligence products and services among American businesses. Our sample includes more than 85,000 American businesses and billions of dollars in corporate spend using data from Ramp’s corporate card and bill pay platform.

Our work builds on previous work by Bonney et al. (2024) by providing a new dataset to measure firm adoption and spend on artificial intelligence. Previous work has relied almost entirely on surveys that ask businesses if they use AI, but surveys may lead to underreporting of actual AI adoption and spend, particularly when questions are unclear or when adoption of a new technology is rising very quickly. Using contract and transaction data from corporate spend with AI companies, we produced a more timely and accurate measurement of AI adoption by U.S. businesses.

Our transaction set is built using company models that extract line-item text from paid receipts and bills uploaded by the purchaser following a sale. Firms are considered to have adopted AI tools if they have a positive transaction amount for an AI product or service in a given month. AI products and services are identified using merchant name and line item details from receipts and bills.

Firms are assigned to industry sectors using internal company models that predict the relevant industry sector using the NAICS standard. Firms are assigned to business size segments using company models that use internal and third-party data on firm revenues and employee counts.

It’s likely our results underestimate actual AI adoption and spend due to the prevalence of businesses using free AI tools, in which no paid transaction occurs, or when employees use personal accounts with AI companies to complete work tasks.

Sources and Definitions

Adoption: The share of businesses with an observed payment for an AI product or service in a given month. The measure uses corporate card, invoice, and ACH transactions processed by Ramp; merchant names and line-item details identify qualifying payments.

Spend per Employee: Monthly observed AI spending divided by employee count for businesses in the reported cohort. The measure combines AI-related corporate card, invoice, and ACH transactions processed by Ramp with matched company employee counts.

Token volumes, spend, and prices: These metrics track token volumes, spend, and prices against AI models among businesses using Ramp’s Token Spend Management product. The product imports usage and billing data from connected AI providers and records costs using provider and model identifiers. It represents a sample of Ramp businesses that spend on AI tokens and use the TSM product. It is not representative of Ramp’s total AI spend volume, though results are directionally similar.