The Brex Benchmark
Startups racing to build AI voice agents
Sumeet Marwaha
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.
Voice AI is having a moment as it becomes the go-to tech for modern customer service.
Our June spend data shows startups layering AI-powered voice solutions on top of communication platforms like Twilio and Bandwidth. The infrastructure handles voice, messaging, and connectivity while speech-to-text tools like Deepgram and AssemblyAI and text-to-speech tool ElevenLabs add intelligence for natural conversations.
They’re building AI that processes spoken language and responds with speech fast, enabling startups to create real-time voice agents for natural, two-way conversations with customers. Think voice-enabled AI assistants, automated appointment booking, and scalable 24/7 support that actually feels human.
Brex customers like Speechify and Vapi are scaling AI voice products fast, and even VCs are bullish on the space. The Information reported rising investor excitement around voice agent startups, and OpenAI and Anthropic also recently released new audio models for developers. Deepgram, ElevenLabs, and AssemblyAI were also top-10 tools in our May 2025 Brex Benchmark.
Top AI vendors — June 2025
Anthropic spending retained the top spot among startup spending, as did OpenAI for enterprises. However, both segments significantly increased spend on their respective No. 2 gen AI vendors — OpenAI for startups, Anthropic for enterprises. Startups spent 20% more with OpenAI, potentially even leveraging its newest audio models for voice agents. Meanwhile, enterprises spent 137% more MoM with Anthropic, moving it ahead of Cursor for the No. 2 spot.
Other takeaways:
- Startups are prioritizing tools that make information more accessible and actionable. They’re spending on tools like Glean to search across sources like Slack and Google Workplace, ReadAI to distill meetings and messages into summaries, and Pinecone to organize and search large volumes of unstructured data.
- Visual AI tools are gaining traction in enterprises. Midjourney spending more than tripled MoM among large businesses, while Runway remains popular for video generation even as it dropped from the startup top 10.
- Cursor is another AI tool we’re continuing to watch, with 29% more MoM spend among startups and a sticky product deeply embedded in dev workflows.
Top SaaS vendors — June 2025
Note: MoM changes are relative to the combined Brex cards and bill pay spend data.
Google ousted Atlassian for the No. 1 spot in enterprise spending. Despite newer solutions popping up, Atlassian tools like Jira, Confluence, and Trello are still deeply embedded in product, engineering, and IT workflows. Postman's rise into the enterprise top 10 reflects growing demand for robust APIs to connect AI and other tools.
Other notable trends:
- Startup spending on Amazon rose 27% month-over-month, while Meta and Google saw declines of 28% and 14%, respectively. Since these are among the top ad and cloud platforms for Brex customers, it’s normal to see month-to-month spend swings.
- Enterprises may be exploring similar voice AI approaches as startups, with customer service platform Zendesk and Deepgram cracking their respective top-10 lists.
- Popular hiring platform Indeed showed a significant MoM spending decrease (54%) in the enterprise.
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.