# Enterprises gear up to end year on a growth note. The Brex Benchmark shows how Brex customers are spending on SaaS and AI tools. Check out insights using Brex data from August 2025. **URL Source:** https://www.brex.com/journal/brex-benchmark-august-2025 --- The Brex Benchmark Enterprises gear up to end year on a growth note. _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](https://www.brex.com/journal/brex-benchmark-july-2025) 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. ![top-ai-vendors-august-2025-2x-2](https://brand.brex.com/transform/927b3586-a9e1-4bd1-b500-c855111aef82/top-ai-vendors-august-2025-2x-2) 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. ![august gpt5](https://brand.brex.com/transform/79755777-31f4-430c-b42f-78764041ff61/OpenAI-spend-August-2025) **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. ![top saas august](https://brand.brex.com/transform/2c15af45-c682-4cb7-bfa9-ab09e2217de6/top-saas-vendors-august-2025-2x-2) 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. ![enterprise growth](https://brand.brex.com/transform/6de20d5c-61d6-4d95-9913-215c2646903f/Enterprise-growth) 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. ![datadog growth](https://brand.brex.com/transform/f66be08d-ad1f-4832-b273-0cb06656b5f1/Datadog) - **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](https://www.brex.com/journal/brex-benchmark-june-2025), 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._ ## Related Articles ### [Finance operations that actually work at scale](https://www.brex.com/journal/finance-operations-that-actually-work-at-scale) Spreadsheets break and fragmented tools slow you down. 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