Nathan Benaich, the general partner who runs British venture capital firm Air Street Capital, visited South Korea and presented data showing a widening divide in artificial intelligence usage worldwide, with heavy users pulling far ahead of everyone else.
Benaich made the presentation at a breakfast forum hosted by ElevenLabs on the 3rd at the Novotel Ambassador in Seoul's Gangnam district. Air Street Capital manages a total of $400 million (about 543.2 billion won) and ranks as one of Europe's largest solo-run venture capital firms. It is also known for publishing "State of AI," an annual report on the state of the industry.
In his presentation, Benaich described the polarization in AI usage among both individuals and companies. "We looked at employee credit card spending across 2,000 U.S. companies," he said. "The top 1% of employees by AI-related spending pay an average of $7,400 a month, while the overall average is just $12." He added that the data shows how wide the gap between the two groups has become.
He also presented figures showing that few ordinary users tap advanced AI capabilities. "If you compare usage of Codex, OpenAI's coding AI agent, 98% of OpenAI employees use it, but among general users, Codex usage is under 1%," Benaich said. He added that only 25% of ChatGPT users apply the tool to complex tasks that take more than eight hours, while the remaining 75% use it for work that could be finished in 30 minutes.
Benaich went on to stress that the gap in AI usage between companies correlates with how fast they grow. "In a survey of 107 U.S.-listed companies, the top 20% of firms by usage of the vibe coding tool Cursor posted annual revenue growth three times larger than the rest," he said.
