Ramp data shows AI spending stalling just as Anthropic nears its IPO
AI usage keeps climbing, but spending has stalled. Price cuts and smarter cost controls among the biggest spenders could challenge investor assumptions about AI hypergrowth.
Get smart on it
AI spending growth has stalled even as companies use more AI tokens, according to data from a business spending platform. Price competition between major AI companies and customers becoming more efficient with their AI usage are both contributing to slower revenue growth, which has raised concerns about whether AI companies can maintain rapid growth as one of them approaches going public. The slowdown suggests that assumptions about unlimited growth in AI spending may not hold, since not all industries may need to spend as much on AI as the highest-spending technology companies currently do.
Relevant courses
Want to go deeper than the news? Explore live, cohort-based AI courses taught by practitioners.
Browse AI courses on MavenRelated news
Perplexity launches its own take on AI agents for work
Perplexity is taking on OpenAI and Anthropic with its own work-focused AI agents. The startup's new always-on "Teammates" can take on multiple roles within a workspace, while pulling existing projects, skills, and memory from the Perplexity tools you already use. Teammates integrate with Perplexity Computer, an AI system that can deploy agents on your device to complete tasks. But Perplexity says Teammates "build on top" of Computer by offering the ability to collaborate and co
Also reported by The Decoder
Airbnb says it’s launching an AI travel agent in the first half of 2027
Airbnb says its upcoming AI agent will help travelers plan trips, compare options, manage bookings, and get assistance throughout their stay.
Also reported by The Verge
Uber only fulfilled 4 rides from AI agents last quarter
AI agents won't be stealing Uber's lunch any time soon. Only four rides were arranged by third-party AI agents during the third quarter of 2026, Uber executives disclosed during an earnings call this morning. The volume of Uber Eats orders fulfilled by AI agents was a little higher, with the company recording "around 500" during the week of Halloween, out of a total 320 million Uber rides and Uber Eats deliveries. This is the first time that Uber has disclosed the number of t
Also reported by TechCrunch
Muse has a voice mode now
Meta now lets you have voice conversations with your Muse AI agent in real time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today. The feature has been rolled out to me, and I gave it a spin on the iOS app while writing this article. As you chat with your Muse agent, the avatar at the top of your conversation animates in time with the words that it's saying. You can also change the tone of the voice by just asking your agent about what you want and letting it decide or by browsing through a
Meta says US users can now video chat with their Muse AI avatar
Meta's AI agent can now take calls as a customizable animated avatar, ahead of the launch of a Tamagotchi-like wearable designed to bring Muse to life.
Claude AI can plug directly into your bank account
Anthropic has a new pitch for managing your personal finances: let Claude do it instead, with a new Personal Finance feature that connects it to your bank and card accounts via the Plaid bank bridging platform. You can ask the chatbot "where did my money go this month," for example, and it'll create an overview with a breakdown of spending by category, including rent and utilities, shopping, and food. Claude can also answer broader questions around what bills are left before yo