Enterprise AI spend overshoots budgets 2.5x, with 55% coming from net-new money
FinanceYF5 · x · 2026-11-04
Continuing the Menlo report thread: enterprise AI spend grew from $1.7B in 2023 to $176.8B by September 2026, roughly 100x in three years.
- Companies budgeted 1.9x last year's spend but actually spent 4.7x on average (median 2.2x vs 1.8x planned), driven by a few heavy users
- 55% of new spend comes from net-new budgets, only 22% from existing software budgets
- Every $1 spent training models translates into $1.70 of usage spend
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