Brex data reveals how startups are bundling tech: 2020 vs 2025

Real spend data from thousands of startups...what’s in, what’s out, and what’s next.

Author

Michael Morgenstern
August 05, 2025

Happy Tuesday Brex Community,

Our Brex Benchmark tracks anonymized spending across thousands of startups (under 250 employees), capturing the spend evolution toward interconnected, AI powered infrastructure. Adobe, a dominant top 5 product in 2020, has vanished from the top 10 entirely. Figma has claimed that territory. Cursor is emerging as core development foundation. While OpenAI serves as the gateway for LLM experimentation, Anthropic increasingly captures the serious money as companies scale their AI dependent products. This spending migration, from trial to scale, separates tools that work from tools that merely demo well.

The most compelling insight, for me, isn't individual tool adoption but how startups are architecting integrated workflows. Sales teams are weaving together La Growth Machine with Clay HQ in over 50% of cases, creating seamless prospecting pipelines. Voice AI ecosystems are crystallizing around ElevenLabs, Deepgram, and GPU platforms like Runpod. Startups using Replit or Pave show a 20x higher likelihood of also deploying Cursor. This isn't scattered experimentation but deliberate system architecture. The smartest startups are locking in their stack early, amplifying productivity through tool synergy. See the full Brex Benchmark for complete insights!

Growing together, Michael Morgenstern 

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The financial stack you can bank on. Trusted by 1 in 3 US startups, Brex allows you to manage your spend from MVP to IPO. Interested? Sign up here using the referral code NEWSLETTER and get 25,000 bonus points, $5K AWS credits, $2.5K OpenAI credits and up to $150K in SaaS discounts.

Don’t hesitate to reach out,🦾!