Generative AI spending keeps growing as enterprises move beyond pilots

Generative AI demand is expanding across enterprise budgets, cloud consumption, consumer usage and workflow software. Menlo Ventures estimates enterprise generative AI spending rose from $1.7 billion in 2023 to $11.5 billion in 2024 and then $37 billion in 2025, with applications capturing $19 billion and taking more than half of measured spending.

The strongest momentum is showing up below the foundation-model layer. AI coding has become the clearest early killer market, with enterprise spending rising from roughly $550 million in 2024 to $4 billion in 2025. Cursor, Lovable, Harvey, OpenEvidence and Higgsfield are cited as examples of generative AI products building substantial revenue in coding, legal, healthcare and video workflows.

Adoption is broadening, but ROI remains the central weakness. McKinsey found 44% of organizations scaling AI across the enterprise, up from 38% a year earlier, while only 37% reported any positive EBIT impact and just 6% qualified as high performers. Funding remains huge but concentrated, with S&P Global counting $217.7 billion raised by generative AI companies during the first half of 2026, much of it shaped by giant foundation-model rounds.