Key Takeaways
- Only 2.2 percent of US households were paying for an AI service as of spring 2026, which means about 98 percent still were not, according to Andreessen Horowitz's State of Markets II report.
- The households that pay spend about $31 a month on average, up from roughly $22 in May 2024, based on PNC Bank transaction data the firm cited.
- Those payments add up to roughly $1.1 billion a year, while a16z estimates hyperscalers will spend about $780 billion building AI in 2026, about 700 times more than households pay to use it.
Only 2.2 percent of US households were paying for an AI service as of spring 2026, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz reported in its State of Markets II analysis published on September 30, 2026, a figure that leaves about 98 percent of American households outside the paid AI market.
The report, a collection of more than 100 charts assembled by a16z general partner David George, draws the household figure from PNC Bank transaction data, which tracks whether money actually moves rather than asking people what they use. The households that do pay spend about $31 a month on average, up from roughly $22 in May 2024, as reported by Crypto Briefing. A separate Bank of America dataset put the share at about 3 percent in March 2026, a rise of roughly 40 percent year over year.
What the records show
The small base of paying households stands against a very large wave of spending to build AI. There are about 131 million households in the United States. At a 2.2 percent paid rate and $31 a month, consumer AI subscriptions add up to roughly $1.1 billion a year.
a16z estimates that hyperscalers will spend about $780 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, up from about $241 billion in 2024 and $416 billion in 2025, and rising further after that. That buildout is about 700 times the size of what households pay to use AI each year. On the public markets, tech contributed about 76 percent of the S&P 500's total earnings growth in 2026.
The enterprise picture shows a similar gap between activity and proof. About 30 percent of S&P 500 companies report some quantifiable impact from AI, but only about 2 percent report a tracked metric over time.
Why it matters
The numbers describe an AI economy whose money is concentrated in capital and large companies, not in households. Hundreds of billions of dollars flow into chips, power and data centers, and tech earnings carry the stock market, while the share of families who pay for an AI product remains near 2 percent. Consumer revenue has not matched infrastructure spending, which is the tension the report documents.
a16z has a direct interest in the AI market it is measuring, and the firm notes that some of its data comes from third parties and portfolio companies and has not been independently verified. On the central spending trend, the independent research group Epoch AI reached a similar conclusion in June. For now, the gap between what is being spent to build AI and what people pay to use it is the clearest number in the report.
David George framed the consumer figure as early rather than final. He said:
The number is higher now, and growing, but it's still tiny in the big scheme of things.
People Also Ask
What share of US households pay for AI?
About 2.2 percent of US households were paying for an AI service as of spring 2026, according to Andreessen Horowitz's State of Markets II report, which drew the figure from PNC Bank transaction data. That leaves about 98 percent of US households not paying for AI.
How much do people spend on AI subscriptions?
Households that pay for AI spend about $31 a month on average as of May 2026, up from roughly $22 in May 2024, according to the PNC Bank transaction data cited by Andreessen Horowitz.
How much are tech companies spending on AI?
Andreessen Horowitz estimates hyperscalers will spend about $780 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, up from about $241 billion in 2024 and $416 billion in 2025, with spending rising further after that.
Sources: a16z State of Markets II, The Neuron, Crypto Briefing.