Companies planned to double their AI spending in 2026, but a small group of intensive users of autonomous agents drove spending to 4.7 times the 2025 level, against 1.9 times expected. AI deployment spending reached $176.8 billion by September 2026, representing a 5.4-fold year-over-year increase and about 2.5 times the planned budgets. The share of enterprises investing in AI rose only modestly, from 55% to 65%, while 55% of the additional spending came from new budgets and just 9% was shifted from traditional SaaS tools to AI-native alternatives. Autonomous agents now account for 80% of token usage on model-interaction platforms, with activity increasing 37-fold since early 2026. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google captured 69% of AI deployment spending, totaling $122.7 billion, while coding and productivity tools accounted for 76% of AI application spending.
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