AI Spend Trends July 2026 | Slash Data

How Businesses Spent on AI in July 2026

Business spending on AI platforms reached a new high in July, as Anthropic retook the lead from OpenAI. The results show a market that remains overwhelmingly concentrated in the two largest model providers, even as usage patterns continue to shift underneath them.

Methodology

This analysis uses anonymized Slash card transaction data.¹ It covers July 1–30, 2026, with June 1–30 as the comparison period. AI merchants were identified using the same descriptor-based classifier used in the existing Slash AI-spend dashboard. Refunds and reversals are handled consistently through the source transaction model. Published results show percentage shares and indexed trends rather than raw dollars, transaction counts, or customer counts.

1. Anthropic retook the lead from OpenAI

Anthropic and OpenAI together represented 97.83% of identified AI-platform spend in July, essentially unchanged from their combined 97.51% share in June. But the balance between the two providers shifted substantially.

Anthropic / Claude rose from 47.59% of identified spend in June to 67.86% in July. OpenAI / ChatGPT moved in the opposite direction, falling from 49.92% to 29.97%.

2. AI spend reached a new high

Our normalized AI-spend index reached 990 in July, compared with 474 in June and a December-through-April average of 100. July was also above May’s previous high of 782.

The direction is clear: businesses using Slash are allocating materially more spend to AI platforms than they were earlier in the year. But the month-to-month path remains volatile, reflecting a mix of recurring subscriptions, usage-based API bills, and occasional large enterprise charges.

3. Smaller AI tools remained a narrow slice of overall spend

Platforms outside OpenAI and Anthropic accounted for just over 2% of identified July AI-platform spend. Within that smaller-tool segment, Runway represented roughly 44%, Lovable about 24%, and Windsurf / Codeium about 16%.

Runway’s share rose sharply from June, but that movement was highly concentrated: one customer represented roughly 80% of July Runway spend. Windsurf / Codeium also gained share, while Lovable remained one of the most consistently visible smaller AI platforms in the dataset.

The takeaway is less that a single challenger has broken away and more that the long tail remains ever-changing. Coding and creative tools can post large percentage gains quickly, but those movements often begin with a handful of high-spending users.

4. Most software companies and startups choose one primary model provider

Among software companies and startups with meaningful monthly spend on OpenAI or Anthropic, just 15.4% used both providers in July. That was down from 26.8% in June.

In July, 53.8% of meaningful model-platform spenders used Anthropic only, 30.8% used OpenAI only, and 15.4% used both. We define “meaningful” usage as at least $100 in monthly spend or three or more transactions on a provider.

This suggests that dual-provider experimentation remains present, but it is not moving in a straight line. Most companies still appear to gravitate towards just one primary provider.

What July tells us

Three conclusions stand out:

Anthropic led July spending by a wide margin, reversing June’s narrow OpenAI lead.
Overall AI-platform spending reached a new high in the Slash dataset.
Several smaller-platform jumps were influenced by concentrated user spending.

AI adoption is still expanding, but the market remains noisy. The most useful signal is therefore the combination of growth, provider mix, adoption breadth, and concentration—not any one metric by itself.