Business Size and Budget

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How much should you spend on AI in your business?
There is no straight answer to this question. Setting the right AI budget for your business is not about following industry averages, but about tailoring it to your needs.

Let's break down the key factors you should consider before deciding on an AI solution.

Budget predictions can vary depending on the scale of your business.

An IBM study indicates that larger companies plan to allocate roughly ~3% of their revenue to AI, about $33.2 million annually for a $1 billion company. In contrast, small and medium business country wise email marketing list owners I’ve interviewed budget around 5-20% of their total revenue to AI.

Small and Medium Businesses (SMB)
If you’re an SMB, consider starting with AI-integrated SaaS platforms that can target multiple departments. For example, Hubspot’s Breeze bundles AI automation for marketing analytics, customer support, and sales into one tool. This integrated approach to AI delivers better ROI than maintaining your own infrastructure, especially for teams with limited technical resources.

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Of course, this decision also depends on the nature of your business. If your business deals with sensitive data or has AI-dependent operations, you’ll likely need a custom model. Depending on your budget and business priorities, you can choose an open-source solution or build a proprietary one.

Roman Georgio, the CEO of Coral Protocol and ex-Camel AI founding member, shared his thoughts on this: "I would pay a bit more to use Claude if I were building a SaaS tool like Cursor since my product depends on the best possible LLM output.

“But if I’m just performing text summarization for an AI-powered CRM, I'd optimize costs and use [an open-source solution like] Mistral or Qwen."