Here’s the thing: consumer hype gets the headlines, but it’s enterprise adoption that decides whether AI thrives or stalls out.
And this week, Andreessen Horowitz (aka a16z) dropped its first-ever AI Spending Report, giving us a peek at which tools are winning wallets, not just attention.
Spoiler: it’s not just the usual suspects… there are some surprises too.
At the top of the list (no surprise here): OpenAI reigns supreme, with Anthropic right behind. But after them? Coding copilots are making serious noise:
Replit snagged the #3 spot
Cursor landed in the top 10
Lovable isn’t far behind
Clearly, startups want helpers that supercharge coding… or at least make debugging feel a little less soul-crushing.
What’s fascinating is how sticky copilots are across the board. Think of them like digital sidekicks that help workers move faster without replacing them outright. According to a16z partner Seema Amble, we’re still firmly in the “copilot era.”
Translation: companies aren’t ready to hand the wheel to full-blown AI agents just yet. But when that tech levels up? The spending landscape could flip fast.
And guess who else is crashing the enterprise party? Consumer apps.
Yep, the same tools folks used for fun projects (think CapCut, MidJourney, Canva) are sneaking into offices and startup stacks. It’s the classic bottom-up adoption play where employees bring in what they love, and suddenly the line between consumer and enterprise blurs.
The report also highlights just how fragmented the market still is. Note-taking apps like Otter, Read AI, HappyScribe are all in the mix. But there’s no single ruler of the note-taking throne—yet.
Zooming out: around 60% of spending is going to horizontal apps (broad productivity tools), while 40% goes to vertical plays like sales, recruiting, and customer service. Even legal tech is catching fire—startups like Crosby Legal can now review contracts in minutes, replacing what used to be hours of billable time with a single click.
The Big Takeaway
Enterprise adoption is a very important pinnacle AI must attain. Consumer buzz is fun, but the real spending power will come from businesses weaving AI into their daily workflows.
Right now, that spending is diverse, experimental, and steadily growing—at least in the startup world.
But let’s not forget: today’s hot app could be tomorrow’s flop. Or, in classic AI fashion, something wildly more advanced could pop up overnight. Either way, signals point toward AI becoming a staple, but the pace/timing is still very uncertain.
That said, we’re still in the early innings. Most of this data is startup-heavy, so it doesn’t fully map onto the Fortune 500 crowd—where adoption tends to be slower, more careful, and way less experimental. So yep, this is one space we’ll be watching closely.
Want to dive deeper? You can check out the full report here.
