Why Some Companies Are Canceling ChatGPT Subscriptions

Companies that buy artificial intelligence chatbots for their workers have many options, and some of them have started looking for the cheapest option. That could explain new data from payments startup Ramp, showing a slight dip in the percentage of Ramp customers that spent money on AI products like ChatGPT between May and June, to 42% from 42.5%.

Ramp’s more than 30,000 corporate card customers collectively spend billions of dollars annually on AI, and the share of companies spending on the tools has been steadily increasing since the start of 2023 before falling slightly for the first time in June, according to Ramp economist Ara Kharazian. 

He said more companies have been canceling corporate chatbot subscriptions such as ChatGPT, though other forms of AI spending, such as paying for models through application programming interfaces, have continued to climb.

Despite the chatbot cancellations, corporate spending on AI has been rising steadily overall, Kharazian said. That trend is reflected in the growing sales at firms like OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which are on track to exceed revenue goals that sounded crazy not too long ago.

Still, the data suggests some AI customers may be gravitating toward free options.

For instance, earlier this year Google started including its Gemini chatbot in its Workspace productivity apps for companies by default while slightly raising the base subscription price for its bundle. Microsoft similarly makes some of its Copilot chatbot features free to business users (although it still charges an additional $30 per month for businesses who want the version of Copilot that integrates with its Office 365 software). 

Those options could incentivize businesses to cancel their paid subscriptions to competitors such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude. Both of those companies also offer free versions of their chatbots for individual subscribers, and companies could tell workers to use those instead.