The Top 1% of Companies Now Spend Roughly 8 Times More on AI Than the Top 10%

Median AI-vendor spending in the top 1% of companies is roughly eight times the median in the top 10%, according to YipitData, a New York alternative-data firm, cited by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in its State of Markets II discussion on September 30, 2026. In a chart posted the same day, a16z said the top 1% of AI spenders were spending more than 600 times as much as the median company. a16z did not name the dataset. An August chart using about $12 per employee against about $7,500 credited Ramp, the corporate-card firm.

The 8x comparison is median-to-median and covers payments to outside AI vendors. It does not measure total AI budgets, capital expenditure, or spending per employee. The underlying company count and dollar values for the 8x comparison were not published in the cited public material.

AI Spending Is Concentrated Among Heavy Users

In the State of Markets II discussion, a16z said 69% of companies in the S&P 500, the main US large-cap stock index, had live AI deployments. Its written analysis separately said about 30% of S&P 500 companies were reporting some quantifiable impact from AI, while about 2% were tracking a metric over time.

a16z put capital expenditure by the largest hyperscalers, including Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, at about $416 billion in 2025 and about $780 billion in 2026. Both figures are separate from the YipitData vendor-payment comparison.

UK Adoption Is Wider Than Deep Use

The Office for National Statistics (ONS), the UK’s official statistics agency, reported on July 20, 2026, that AI use among businesses with 10 or more employees had risen from about 12% in late 2023 to about 35% in its June 2026 wave. Fieldwork ran from June 15 to June 28. Among businesses using AI, the average number of technologies in use increased from about 1.4 to 1.6.

The ONS described adoption as “relatively shallow,” with about 10% of AI-using businesses reporting extensive use. On a wider business base, AI use reached about 49% among firms with 250 or more employees, compared with 28% among firms with zero to nine employees. In the June wave, among businesses with 10 or more employees, large language models were used by 18% of businesses, visual content creation by 16%, data processing using machine learning by 12%, and image processing using machine learning by 6%. The agency said the rise in the number of technologies used would imply relatively limited transformative impacts for most businesses using AI. Information and communication recorded 58% AI use, compared with 13% in construction. The 49% and 28% size split covers businesses of all sizes, while the 35% figure covers only those with 10 or more employees.

NatWest Group, a major UK bank, reported a separate survey on September 25, 2026, covering 1,400 UK small and mid-market businesses. It found 44% were using AI, while another 41% expected to adopt it within five years. Among current AI users, 6% were at a “transforming” stage, while 29% were still piloting AI or building awareness.

The NatWest survey also found AI use among 67% of businesses with more than 100 employees, compared with 36% among smaller firms. Businesses at the earliest stage typically reported saving 1% to 10% of working time, while those at the transforming stage reported average savings of 61% to 70%. Some 95% of transforming-stage businesses reported higher revenue, compared with fewer than 29% at the earliest stage. These figures are survey responses rather than independently verified financial results.