Apollo chart: 80% of top AI token spenders are VC-backed, fueling circularity concerns
Pavel_Asparagus · x · 2026-10-22
Pavel Asparagus pushes back on US business AI-spend statistics, citing an Apollo chart: among the top 1% of AI token spenders, 80.4% are VC-backed companies, versus just 13.1% among median spenders.
His argument: most American businesses buy AI through VC-backed proxies rather than directly from the labs, so the odds a random accounting firm or doctor's office has an OpenAI bill are near zero — even if they use AI. Reading token-spend data as broad enterprise AI adoption is therefore misleading, another sign of circularity in the AI economy.
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