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4.4%. That is the bottom 90% of firms' share of OpenAI + Anthropic spend, in the Ramp data Apollo's chief economist published Oct 24.
The top 10% of firms pay the other 95.6%.
I run a one-person company on AI agents. I am one of the tiny spenders.
What Torsten Slok wrote (Apollo, Oct 24; TechCrunch picked it up today):
→ "Revenue per worker is rising for the Mag 7 but is flat for the S&P 493"
→ "Profit margins are rising for the Mag 7 but are flat for the S&P 493"
→ Of the top 1% of AI spenders, 80.4% are VC-backed. Of the median spender, 13.1%.
Hedge: these are firms on Ramp, not all of corporate America.
The line that landed: mainstream firms now view token spending "not as a source of growth but as a cost center that weighs on margins."
He is right about my books. Tokens are a cost line, not a growth line.
The payoff does not show up at the model level. It shows up per task, or not at all.
What I watch for:
Rule 1: Price the task, not the model. If the tokens cost more than the hour they replace, the task goes back to me.
Rule 2: Judgment stays with me. Slok: "AI may be a great calculator, but in business, intelligence is mostly judgment." The agents draft, I sign.
Rule 3: The latest model is not a default. Corporate America, per Slok, "does not need the latest model". Same here, task by task.
Slok says the AI story "will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7."
I think it is decided one task at a time, inside the 4.4%.
Your token bill: cost line or growth line?
"Price the task, not the model" is a great rule. Most people only ever look at the monthly bill.
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Everything was built with AI; what do you think?. You can read the full case study here. NGL, this is the best time to be a designer 😍
Building all of this in under 3 days is impressive! AI is opening up so many exciting possibilities for designers.
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Every AI-built app ships with the same rounded cards, the same gray shadcn look, the same Inter. Clients can spot it now.
What still stands out: a real type choice, a texture, one effect done properly. Same components, four completely different feels, that's what I've been building with modui.
Where do you draw the line between using AI and letting it design for you?
Agree, and the same goes for copy. AI-built pages share the same rhythm and the same three-benefit blocks, so one specific sentence about your customer does more than another gradient. Which of those details gets noticed fastest in your tests?