AI spend per employee fell at top firms in August, and falling token prices are only part of the story
TechCrunch·medium signal
TechCrunch reported on 2026-09-09 that per-employee AI spending slumped in August across leading companies, attributing it to falling token costs, cheaper models, and genuinely less spend per head. The framing question is whether this is summer seasonality or the first real signal that adoption is not compounding the way hyperscalers underwrote. Either way it cuts against the capex narrative, and it is the counter-data point worth holding next to every enterprise-adoption survey.