Anthropic overtakes OpenAI, AI's impact on hiring, and new trends in SaaS

New transaction data from 70,000+ businesses shows who's winning the AI vendor race, how much heavy adopters are spending, and what AI is doing to headcount

Key findings

Anthropic surpassed OpenAI in adoption by U.S. businesses for the first time, with adoption surging 21.8 percentage points from January to July. In a category with low lock-in and minimal switching costs, the playing field can change fast — 52% of businesses that use either now use both.

Companies that invest heavily in AI grew headcount 10.2% in the two years following adoption, with entry-level roles growing even faster at 12% — gains driven entirely by the highest-intensity adopters.

The top 1% of AI adopters spend more than $7,400 per employee per month on AI, and the top 10% spend $650 — while the median adopter spends just $11.95.

Summary

AI adoption is racing toward saturation, so the story is no longer whether businesses use AI — it's how intensely. The vendor race is wide open: Anthropic leapfrogged OpenAI this year in a category where switching is cheap and loyalty is thin.

Heavy adopters are pulling away, spending orders of magnitude more per employee than the typical business and, notably, adding headcount rather than cutting it. Meanwhile, traditional SaaS vendors are increasingly charging for AI features, with usage-based billing climbing to 36% of embedded AI spend, up from 24% a year earlier.

Our Summer 2026 Business Spending Report tracks these shifts through billions worth of anonymized transactions from more than 70,000 businesses across manufacturing, health care, tech, finance, and more.

What you'll learn

Exclusive data on the vendors gaining ground, how much companies really spend on AI, what adoption is doing to hiring, and other spend insights that can inform your business's decisions.