# Startups are snapping up AI infrastructure Demand for AI data infrastructure is exploding. Startups are staking their claim, but what about enterprises? The Brex Benchmark provides the details. **URL Source:** https://www.brex.com/journal/brex-benchmark-july-2025 --- The Brex Benchmark Startups are snapping up AI infrastructure. _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 on Brex, we have an inside look at the top tools driving modern business. The methodology includes Brex card and bill pay transactions. "Startups" are companies with under 250 employees, and "enterprises" are those with 250+ employees._ **The AI “space race” is on, and startups are moving fast to secure capacity.** A sharp month-over-month surge in spend on **Snowflake**, **Oracle**, and **Google** suggests early-stage companies aren’t just testing AI tools. They’re increasingly investing in the data and compute backbone to run them. They may be getting ahead of a demand surge that even the biggest players are scrambling to meet. Top US tech giants are pouring hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure. Amazon plans to spend over $100B this year (a 20% YoY increase), with most of it earmarked for AWS. Google CEO Sundar Pichai warns of a “tight supply environment,” and Meta is racing to build U.S. data centers for superintelligence-scale workloads. Startups may not have billions, but they’re making similar moves: securing compute and building data pipelines now. With startup spend on **Anthropic** also surging (+275% MoM), the stakes to scale AI are skyrocketing. This makes the 2023 Nvidia GPU rush look like just the tip of the AI iceberg. Now, it's a full-on “space race” to lock in AI capacity so it doesn’t become a billion-dollar bottleneck. ![Top AI vendors among Brex customers — July 2025](https://brand.brex.com/transform/aa2b8ccf-e3c8-4674-8a61-6a234d4805ad/top-ai-vendors-july-2025-2x) More than half of startups’ AI spending is on Anthropic. **Anthropic **spending among startups increased 275% MoM and accounted for more than half of overall startup AI spending in July,** **suggesting a clear shift away from **OpenAI**, which fell 23% MoM. Startups continue to build around Anthropic’s Claude for its quality, pricing, and developer friendliness. OpenAI remains the top AI vendor for enterprises. ![Startups continue to increase spending on Anthropic and Cursor (July 2025)](https://brand.brex.com/transform/72dafab6-cfa0-4e4e-ae19-41eb6fe06e75/anthropic-cursor-charts-2x) Other takeaways: - **Cursor **spend was up 9% MoM among startups, continuing a multi-month streak of steady growth. The developer darling continues to be a top-3 tool in startups as well as enterprises. - Is the TikTok effect taking over enterprise? **Descript**, a platform for collaborative editing of video, audio, and transcripts, joined the enterprise top-10 after a 157% MoM spend increase. With **Runway** up two spots, large companies signal renewed interest in AI-native post-production tools. ![Top SaaS tools, July 2025](https://brand.brex.com/transform/b32c7c6e-c162-4708-9195-cf8e3b0d2792/top-saas-vendors-july-2025-2x) Startups are moving fast on cloud and compute. Across the SaaS leaderboard, early-stage companies are shifting spend toward foundational tools like cloud and data infrastructure for their AI-led businesses. **Snowflake** and **Oracle** joined the startup top-10 with a 2x and 3x increase in MoM spend, respectively, while **Google** spend rose 26% MoM. ![Startups spent more with Google, Snowflake, and Oracle in July 2025](https://brand.brex.com/transform/0717214b-c109-4582-af0d-6e40eed5a423/startups-chart-2x-1) It’s clear startups are taking market cues seriously — McKinsey estimates it will take $3 trillion in new data center investment to meet global AI demand, with large investments in data and compute layers. Other notable trends: - **Shopify **dropped spots in both segments, suggesting a pullback in ecommerce spend as startups shift focus from external growth to AI tooling and internal ops. - Enterprises ramped up** Carta** spend, potentially signaling a warming of the IPO pipeline or secondary sales. - Despite [**Figma’s** rapid rise](https://www.brex.com/journal/brex-benchmark-startup-software-stack) in startups, enterprises remain loyal to **Adobe’s** suite of products, with spend up ~10% MoM. But for [how long](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brexhq_brex-benchmark-figma-vs-adobe-activity-7355674356137566208-Ruk6)? _Sumeet Marwaha is the Head of Data at Brex, supporting Brex in understanding how 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](mailto:privacy@brex.com)._ ## Related Articles ### [Rise of the AI-first financial OS - Cook's Playbooks](https://www.brex.com/journal/rise-of-the-ai-first-financial-os) Industry expert Jim Cook weighs in on the evolution of finance tech, from digitization to integrated apps to the next frontier: the AI-first finance OS. ### [AI in finance and the benefits for enterprises](https://www.brex.com/journal/ai-in-finance-and-the-benefits-for-enterprises) Large orgs are lagging in finance AI adoption, but they stand to gain the most through automation and productivity improvements. ### [Brex named a Leader in 2025 IDC MarketScape for AI-Enabled T&E Applications – Small Business, Midmarket and Enterprise ](https://www.brex.com/journal/leader-idc-ai-travel-and-expense) We're honored to be recognized as a Leader in the 2025 IDC MarketScape: AI-Enabled Travel and Expense Applications across all business segments. ### [Building autonomous agents for technical tasks: 5 lessons learned](https://www.brex.com/journal/building-autonomous-agents-for-technical-tasks) Brex built a general-purpose template for delegating engineering work to agents with confidence. 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