# Brex data: Anthropic tops startup AI spend The Brex Benchmark shows how Brex customers are spending on SaaS and AI tools. Check out insights using Brex data from May 2025. **URL Source:** https://www.brex.com/journal/brex-benchmark-may-2025 --- The Brex Benchmark Brex data: Anthropic tops startup AI spend. Every month, our customers spend billions of dollars on Brex. We're excited to share with you a glimpse into how they’re spending that money with The Brex Benchmark, a monthly snapshot of the top software and AI vendors by dollar spend on Brex, as well as overall SaaS and AI adoption rates across the Brex ecosystem. The goal of The Brex Benchmark is to help you understand where startups, enterprises, and other high-growth companies are investing in their technology stacks in 2025 and beyond. You can look forward to refreshed data charts with new trends and insights every month. You’ll notice we’ve broken out AI tools from SaaS tools, and that’s for two reasons: 1. to better track the defining technology shift of our era, and 2. credit-based pricing models make AI spending patterns look different from traditional software since costs scale directly with usage. From industry-standard SaaS products like Google and Twilio to emerging AI code and design tools like Cursor and Runway, here's an inside look at which vendors Brex customers are using to build the future faster. **Note:** We'll define "startups" as companies with under 250 employees and "enterprises" as those with 250+ employees. Top AI vendors ![Top 10 AI tools in May 2025, by dollars spent on Brex](https://brand.brex.com/transform/4bb2e82e-9bfa-4785-8256-0ca8cf02f227/AI-tools-May-2025-png) **Anthropic** leads AI spending among startups — more than 2x OpenAI spending in May — and suggests Claude is the foundational model of choice for startups building with AI. However, **OpenAI **outpaced Anthropic spending by 4x in the enterprise, potentially reflective of OpenAI's longer market presence and breadth of offerings. Other AI spending insights: - Startups and enterprises are investing heavily in **Cursor **for AI-powered coding and development, with organizations prioritizing AI-assisted workflows. Cloud-based vector database service **Pinecone**, a favorite among developers, is also a popular tool in companies of all sizes. - One fast-growing AI app development tool in both segments is **Replit** (“the safest place for vibe coding”), which did not appear in April’s top 10 for either segment. - In both segments, **ElevenLabs** and **Runway** are popular AI-generated media and voice synthesis tools accelerating audio and visual work, with image generation platform **Midjourney **a top-7 tool** **in the enterprise**.** Top SaaS vendors ![Top 10 SaaS tools in April/May 2025, by dollars spent on Brex](https://brand.brex.com/transform/4899fac8-a7ba-43ee-b017-3ba9fbdc4ad2/SaaS-tools-May-2025) The top-10 SaaS tools remained the same for both segments in April and May 2025.** Google **continues to** **dominate startup spending, reflecting the importance of Google Workspace, Cloud Platform, and advertising services for growing companies. Project management and collaboration platform **Atlassian** leads enterprise spending with tools like Jira and Confluence. Atlassian is also among startups, ranking third over the past two months. **Twilio** is a top tool across both segments, holding the No. 2 spot for startups and enterprises in May. Twilio's communication infrastructure as a service helps companies add SMS, voice, video, and messaging to their apps, demonstrating both the platform's universal need and robust scalability. Other SaaS spending trends: - **Adobe’s** roots run deep in both segments for creative software, but startups are gravitating more toward **Figma’s** collaborative, cloud-based design platform. - **Indeed **spending showed a slight uptick MoM among larger organizations, potentially indicating plans to boost hiring this summer. - **GoDaddy** continues to be one of the most popular website hosting platforms across segments, with **Squarespace** also a top tool among startups. We expect to see these in future Brex Benchmarks since businesses rarely migrate core web infrastructure. - Direct mail platform **Stannp.com** was a top-10 SaaS tool in the enterprise. This data supports a rising marketing trend of going analog to cut through the digital noise and directly connect with core audiences. _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 ### [Made by Nacho case study](https://www.brex.com/resources/customer/made-by-nacho) Made by Nacho couldn’t track spending against a given budget with Amex. 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