Enterprise AI spending surges 5x in a year, driven by agents

A new enterprise AI report from Menlo documents a sharp increase in AI spending among companies, with per-company expenditure rising nearly fivefold over the past year. The growth is being fueled primarily by adoption of AI agents. The briefing highlights ten key metrics on demand for frontier models, Anthropic's expanding market share, and revenue trends in coding agent tools.

Market turbulence has also marked the period: AI stocks have experienced their worst drawdown since 2020, and doubt is growing around a potential Anthropic IPO. Separately, Meter reports that AI-driven research output is accelerating across the field.