AI Getting Too Expensive: Fable 5 Is a Virtual Dud for Corporate Clients

According to spending data from financial services firm Ramp, US companies are hardly buying Anthropic's strongest model via API. In the first month after launch, only about six percent of tokens purchased at Anthropic were for Fable 5, and it accounted for 11.4 percent of total spending on Anthropic models. OpenAI's flagship GPT-5.6 Sol captured 25 percent of tokens and 23 percent of spending at OpenAI. Overall, Fable 5 generated only about 75 percent of the model-related revenue of GPT-5.6 Sol, despite being significantly more expensive per token. Ramp notes methodologically that the sample is somewhat skewed toward tech companies, so actual Fable adoption may be even lower. Ramp economist Ara Kharazian attributes the lukewarm adoption to price: Fable 5 costs about $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, roughly double the price of GPT-5.6 Sol or other Anthropic flagship models. He sees a new ceiling in what companies are willing to spend on AI, as the extra performance is simply not worth the price. However, the real explanation may be more complex: the additional performance Fable 5 offers may not be relevant or measurable for many use cases, reflecting the difficulty of calculating AI return on investment. This does not mean Fable 5 marks the peak of willingness to pay; significantly more powerful models could deliver tangible value. In July, 43.5 percent of US companies paid for Anthropic subscriptions or tokens, up 1.1 percentage points from the previous month. OpenAI reached 39.7 percent, growing only 0.23 percentage points, below the general growth of AI adoption. xAI saw the fastest growth since July 2025, rising 0.94 percentage points to 4 percent. Advanced users, on whom OpenAI and Anthropic increasingly depend for growth, are turning more to open-source models, which are only a few months behind frontier models. Overall AI spending continues to rise: in July, the top one percent of US companies spent a median of $7,400 per employee on AI, the top ten percent $650, and the median company $11.95 per employee. The data suggests companies are spending more on AI but not without limits, and the willingness to pay significantly higher prices for hard-to-measure performance gains seems exhausted, taking Fable 5 as a benchmark.