The AI startups that prospects will reliably shell out for are those that can finally survive and thrive.
Appears apparent sufficient, but it surely bears repeating within the AI trade’s monetary funhouse-mirror panorama. ARR stays removed from reliable, because the SaaS-era metric has been getting watered down: In some circumstances, firms fold in pilot income and one-time offers, bolstering the looks of stability. In the meantime, there’s numerous nervousness round what it means for an AI software to supply true ROI.
So I used to be intrigued by fintech Brex’s current information outlining 2025’s 50 fastest-growing software program distributors. The information is predicated on actual spending, drawn from bank card and invoice pay transactions from greater than 35,000 anonymized Brex prospects, that reveals simply who these prospects are prepared to pay for AI instruments and providers.
The information weighs current months extra closely to pick out for firms that didn’t simply soar and crash at the start of 2025. The information additionally filters out public firms and firms price greater than $30 billion, so it covers the class of firms I most fear about in a bubble burst—the unicorns valued, kind of, between $5 and $25 billion. Sufficiently big to matter, however not too huge to fail.
The fastest-growing software program vendor in 2025: Cursor, valued north of $29 billion, got here in at primary. The king of the coding juggernauts, Cursor noticed 1,000% year-over-year development in spending amongst Brex prospects. Marwaha stated that Cursor noticed “spend compounding every single month of 2025. No other vendor in our data did that. Not one.”
It wasn’t simply Cursor—coding instruments as a class put up a considerable exhibiting within the prime 50. Windsurf (acquired by Cognition after initially agreeing to a cope with OpenAI) got here in at No. 6, Replit at No. 9, CodeRabbit at No. 15, and StackBlitz at No. 36.
“This category basically didn’t exist two years ago,” Marwaha stated. “Now there’s a paid, AI-powered coding environment that developers actually want and that managers are approving real budgets for.”
Marwaha stated that the principle consider that fast rise was “Friction. Or rather, the lack of it. Developers can run these tools locally. No IT approvals, no security reviews, no six-month procurement death march. Download it, use it, see the value immediately.”
Another notable and shocking shoutouts: No. 2 was OpenRouter, a much less well-known AI mannequin market, which noticed 1,500% year-over-year spending development on Brex. Different names drawing {dollars} on the infrastructure layer embody Huge.ai (No. 11), Groq (No. 12), Supabase (No. 23), and Sentry(No. 33).
The pure query, simply days earlier than Christmas, is how this can all play out in 2026. Marwaha’s betting on visible AI. In 2025, AI video manufacturing software supplier Kling.ai got here in at No. 3, whereas Ideogram and Runway made the record at No. 17 and No. 44 respectively. The thought is that these visible and video platforms might observe the no-friction coding software playbook.
“The winners in 2026 won’t just be general-purpose generators,” Marwaha instructed Fortune. “They’ll be tools that nail a particular use case so well that teams can’t go back to the old way.”
See you tomorrow,
Enterprise Offers
– Kargo, a San Francisco-based developer of an AI-powered community designed to watch inbound and outbound freight within the provide chain, raised $42 million in Sequence B funding. Avenir led the spherical and was joined by Linse Capital, Hearst Ventures, Lightbank, and others.
– Truemed, an Austin, Texas-based telehealth market, raised $34 million in Sequence A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the spherical and was joined by Bessemer Enterprise Companions, Lengthy Journey Ventures, BoxGroup, and Belief Ventures.
Non-public Fairness
– Built-in Energy Companies, backed by Searchlight Capital Companions, agreed to amass TechPro Energy Group, a Crofton, Md.-based group of energy providers firms. Monetary phrases weren’t disclosed.
– Vitruvian Companions acquired Aquabyte, a San Francisco, Calif.-based developer of laptop imaginative and prescient and machine studying software program designed to enhance effectivity in fish farming. Monetary phrases weren’t disclosed.
Exits
– Alphabet agreed to amass Intersect, a San Francisco-based power and information heart infrastructure firm, for $4.75 billion. The acquisition contains TPG Rise Local weather’s stake within the firm.
– Sandbrook Capital agreed to amass United Utility Companies, a New Orleans, La. and Charlotte, N.C.-based utility providers firm, from Bernhard Capital Companions. Monetary phrases weren’t disclosed.
– TPG agreed to amass a majority stake in Conservice, a River Heights, Utah-based utility administration firm, from Introduction Worldwide. Monetary phrases weren’t disclosed.
