The Brex Benchmark is a monthly snapshot of the top software and AI vendors by dollar spend using Brex. With 30,000+ customers spending billions of dollars, you get an inside look at the top tools driving modern business. We updated our methodology this month to include Brex card and bill pay transactions to capture a more comprehensive spending picture. "Startups" are companies with under 250 employees, and "enterprises" are those with 250+ employees.

Companies are making moves to drive pipeline, holiday demand, and year-end results.

With Q4 on the horizon, Brex spending data shows customers shifting from infrastructure to growth levers. Enterprises saw softer spend for staples like Atlassian and Zoom but spikes in spending on Google and Indeed services, indicating signs of gearing up for a strong finish to the year.

For startups, July’s infrastructure investments looked more like pre-investments for handling future growth. Core SaaS spend held steady, while infrastructure spend slowed: Oracle fell out of the top 10 as annual contracts settled, while Snowflake spending declined 30%. Amazon and Meta retained their No. 2 and 3 spots, respectively.

OpenAI spend jumps; Anthropic spending soars in enterprise.

Anthropic continues to be the top AI tool among startups and OpenAI the top tool for enterprises. In August, however, spending on the secondary tools showed notable increases. Even as OpenAI released its less expensive GPT-5 model, startup spending on OpenAI increased more than 30% MoM. Enterprises increased their Anthropic spend by 55% MoM, while maintaining a steady growth rate with OpenAI (+15%). Cursor remains a top-3 tool and the AI code editor of choice in both segments.

Deepgram jumped five spots in the startup top-10. The voice AI platform brings speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and voice agents into other software and apps. Top use cases include real-time call transcription and analysis for better customer support, and powering natural-sounding voice assistants that respond instantly.

Other takeaways:

• Midjourney has been a regular in the enterprise space, and the image generation tool finally cracked the top 10 for startups.
• Runway dropped from the top 10 in startup spend but is up 30% MoM among enterprises.
• ElevenLabs spending held steady among startups but soared 40% MoM for larger companies.

Enterprise spending on Google, Indeed spikes.

Enterprise spending with Google spiked 30% MoM, signaling a strong push into digital acquisition channels and broader demand generation. At the same time, Indeed spend surged 60% MoM, indicating investment in another type of growth — headcount. Even Twilio’s 10% MoM increase indicates a commitment to customer communications that fuel retention and upsells.

Other notable trends:

• Datadog surged into the top 5 for startups after a 50% increase in MoM spending. The monitoring and visibility platform charges based on usage, so spending goes up as customers add more infrastructure and traffic. Instead of acting like a fixed SaaS subscription, Datadog tends to grow in lockstep with expansion.

• Validity sells tools that help marketing, sales, and customer teams clean, verify, and manage their data, and joined the enterprise top 10. Data accuracy helps power more effective go-to-market efforts.
• Bandwidth appeared in the startup top 10 in our June Benchmark, and the communications platform reappeared again in August, with spend increasing 20%.

Sumeet Marwaha is the Senior Manager of Data Science at Brex, supporting the Go-To-Market team in understanding how Brex customers spend, adopt tools, and grow their businesses.

All analysis conducted for this report that uses Brex internal customer data is anonymized and aggregated for privacy. To learn more about how we use data in anonymized or aggregated form for these trend reports, email us at privacy@brex.com.