The New Year Reality Check: Who’s Really Adopting AI, w/ Ramp Economist Ara Kharazian

What’s actually happening with AI adoption inside U.S. businesses—and how much of the public discourse is just vibes?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we dig into the hard numbers behind AI spend and adoption with Ara Kharazian, an economist at Ramp and the leader of Ramp Economics Lab. Using anonymized, real-time corporate spend data across tens of thousands of businesses, Ara shares what the “receipts” reveal about who’s buying AI, how fast budgets are shifting, and where the hype diverges from reality.

What we cover

• Ramp’s unique vantage point: why transaction-level corporate spend data can reveal real behavior—not just surveys or anecdotes
• AI adoption is rising: what Ramp’s data suggests about the share of businesses paying for AI tools and APIs
• The “ROI” question: how we can infer whether AI is working (hint: contract sizes and renewals)
• Where spend is concentrating: tech and finance lead—but healthcare and manufacturing are climbing faster than many expect
• Chatbots vs. real workflow change: why “everyone has a chatbot” isn’t the same as transformative productivity
• Who’s winning the model wars: OpenAI’s default position, Anthropic’s growth, and how buyers behave differently
• Bundled AI and hidden usage: why Copilot/Gemini adoption is hard to measure, and why employees expensing personal accounts matters
• Trust, governance, and observability: the fast-growing category of tools that monitor AI outputs and reduce reputational or security risk
• 996 culture is real: what corporate receipts suggest about weekend work patterns in San Francisco
• Open source reality check: what the data suggests about DeepSeek-style hype vs. actual enterprise adoption
• Looking ahead: why we likely won’t see a reversal in AI adoption—and why it’s still unclear who the ultimate winners will be

Timestamps:

• 00:06:00 – What Ramp is, and what “Ramp Economics Lab” tracks
• 00:08:00 – The biggest headline: adoption, spend, and contract sizes
• 00:11:00 – Which industries are adopting fastest (including surprises)
• 00:12:00 – Chatbots vs. productivity gains: where AI is actually moving the needle
• 00:15:00 – Signals of ROI: contract renewals and retention trends
• 00:16:00 – OpenAI vs. Anthropic: what spend reveals about “default” vs. multi-provider behavior
• 00:18:00 – Why Copilot/Gemini are tricky to track (bundled AI)
• 00:21:00 – The real blocker: trust in outputs (and how companies respond)
• 00:26:00 – The rise of AI observability / governance tooling
• 00:30:00 – What spend data can reveal about how work is changing (996 / SF)
• 00:33:00 – How rare it is to see a trend that truly moves an economy
• 00:36:00 – Is AI spend crowding out other budgets?
• 00:38:00 – The narratives that bother Ara most: data-poor hot takes
• 00:42:00 – Predictions: continued growth, unclear winners
• 00:44:00 – DeepSeek and open source: what actually happened in the spend data

If you want to understand AI adoption the way a CFO would—through budgets, renewals, and real purchasing behavior—this conversation will give you a sharper, more grounded lens.

Guest: Ara Kharazian, Economist at Ramp; Lead, Ramp Economics Lab