Where startups actually spend on AI

October 22, 2025

According to the latest AI Spending Report published by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), startups are no longer just talking about artificial intelligence — they are seriously investing. The analysis covered transactional data from over 200,000 clients on the fintech platform Mercury, revealing which AI companies are actually earning from young tech firms.

At the top of the list, unsurprisingly, is OpenAI, followed by Anthropic in second place. Perplexity ranks 12th, and Merlin AI 30th — showing just how embedded general AI assistants have become in business processes.

Interestingly, four “vibe coding” platforms — Replit, Cursor, Lovable, and Emergent — also made the top 50, confirming that generative code assistants are no longer just toys for developers, but serious enterprise tools. The most represented category is creative tools, including Freepik (4th), ElevenLabs (5th), Kling (15th), and Canva (17th), while the rest of the list focuses on AI meeting assistants, digital “employees,” and specialized agent tools.

While ChatGPT and Claude naturally occupy leading positions, the surprise is the rapid growth of specialized AI solutions increasingly used in real-world business scenarios. The startup world shows that the era of experimentation is ending — and a phase of deploying, measuring, and monetizing AI is beginning.

In brief: Tech World Highlights:

Elon Musk criticized Anthropic on X, stating that “victory was never among the possible outcomes” for the creator of Claude.
SAP and OpenAI revealed plans for “OpenAI for Germany,” a sovereign AI platform set to bring advanced AI capabilities to German public officials, with launch scheduled for 2026.
Cohere announced it raised $100 million, increasing its valuation to nearly $7 billion, driven by strong demand for its security-oriented AI platform North and Command A models.
Cloudflare open-sourced VibeSDK, a tool that allows anyone to launch their own AI platform for “vibe coding” with a single click.
The UK government revealed that its new AI Accelerator for fraud risk assessment helped recover a record £480 million in fraudulent claims over the past year.