Gumroad Says That It's Now Spending as Much on Human Employees as AI Tokens

Gumroad Says That It’s Now Spending As Much On Human Employees As AI Tokens July 21, 2026July 21, 2026 OfficeChai TeamSome comapnies are now spending as much on AI as human employees.Gumroad is the latest to put a number on it, and the number is striking mostly because of how far it had to fall to get there. Founder and CEO Sahil Lavingia shared a chart this week showing Gumroad’s human payroll against its AI token spend going back to June 2021. In June 2021, the company spent $419K on W2 employees and contractors, and literally nothing on AI. That figure held roughly steady through 2022 at $406K, before beginning a steep decline: $258K in June 2023, $309K in June 2024 (a brief uptick), then $203K in June 2025. By June 2026, human payroll had fallen to $43K a month.

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