Unlike infrastructure providers, which reflect the capabilities startups are enabling (compute, models, developer tools), these companies show where AI is actually being applied in products and workflows and that distinction matters: this ranking gives us a real-time signal of what early stage startups are \u201cbuying\u201d in AI. The findings draw a relevant parallel to Mercury\u2019s broader survey<\/a> of non-Mercury customers showing most early-stage companies surveyed are planning to ramp AI spend, and those using AI are seeing a higher ROI than with traditional tools.<\/p>\n Companies that made the list range from vibe coding platforms to creative tools to customer service solutions. And, the rankings bring real evidence to what AI enthusiasts have intuited \u2013 not only is AI augmenting employees in specific roles (\u201cAI for patent lawyers\u201d), it\u2019s turning specific roles into broadly deployed skills across a company (everyone can be a creative now!).<\/p>\n Methodology notes \u2013 we did not include companies that primarily sell cloud services (ex. Azure) or GPUs (ex. Coreweave) or infrastructure tools. Spend for Google includes both Google Cloud and Gemini models, as we were unable to disentangle the two.<\/p>\n This data is limited to transactions made via Mercury such as ACH, IO card spend, and wires. It does not capture Mercury customer spend on other sources including on non-Mercury cards that may be reimbursed. The data does not reflect spend from Mercury Personal customers.<\/p>\n 1. Horizontal applications have a slight majority in spend.<\/p>\n We separate applications into those that are horizontal (focused on boosting overall productivity across a company, with anyone able to use them) and those that are vertical (targeting specific roles). Horizontal companies make up 60% of the list, compared to 40% for vertical companies.<\/p>\n Within horizontal applications, the most well known names are the general LLM assistants \u2013 #1 OpenAI, #2 Anthropic, and #12 Perplexity, followed by #30 Merlin AI. We\u2019re also seeing workspaces emerge where users can access LLMs in-context of their existing files \u2013 including #10 Notion and #33 Manus. The fact that several products in this category made the ranks indicates the race here is not won. We\u2019ve either yet to see the emergence of a true winner, or this space will not be \u201cwinner takes all,\u201d with users switching between different UIs (or models) depending on their needs.<\/p>\n Beyond general assistants, another major category of horizontal products was meeting support. These are primarily notetakers \u2013 #7 Fyxer (which also drafts email), #36 Happyscribe, #38 Plaude (manufacturer of a hardware pin), #41 Otter AI, and #49 Read AI. However, the category is also expanding with products like #26 Cluely, which offer real time, in-meeting feedback.<\/p>\n Two other application categories that we would argue are now horizontal? Creative tools and vibe coding! These previously would have been the domain of specific functions: marketing or design departments would have used creative tools, while engineering teams would have been drawn to vibe coding. However, AI has opened up applications in these categories that can be (and are) used by people in any role. We\u2019re seeing this in a few categories, where typically domain-specific tools are becoming more horizontal.<\/p>\n Creative tools are represented by ten names on the list, ranking as the largest single category. The leader is all-in-one suite Freepik (#4), followed by text to speech generator ElevenLabs (#5). Image and video had the most applications in the ranks \u2013 with Canva, Photoroom, and Midjourney, and Descript, Opus Clip, and Capcut, respectively. But, avatars are also emerging with #47 Arcads (primarily used for advertisements), and #50 Tavus (multi-purpose).<\/p>\n 2. Vertical applications can be augmentors \u2013 or substitutes.<\/p>\n There are two ways to think about vertical AI. On the one hand, it can supercharge human employees in their roles by reducing the most repetitive or mundane tasks, so that they can spend their time on higher-value work. On the other hand, it can reduce or remove the very need for human teams.<\/p>\n So far, we\u2019re mostly seeing the former. Of the seventeen vertical application companies, 12 focus on supercharging humans \u2013 while five aim to serve as \u201cAI employees\u201d that complete workflows end-to-end. The latter includes #27 Crosby Legal (agentic law firm), #34 Cognition (AI engineer), #37 11x (automated GTM employees), #39 Serval (AI IT service desk), and #42 Alma (AI-powered immigration law services).<\/p>\n Nevertheless, we expect to see more end-to-end agentic products \u2013 and even AI-native services businesses \u2013 emerge. These are especially likely to be represented in the Mercury customer base, as new startups may not be locked into multi-year contracts with expensive providers like lawyers, accountants, etc. \u2013 and instead \u201chire AI\u201d!<\/p>\n What about the most popular categories of vertical software? We determined a few representatives for each of three verticals:<\/p>\n Customer service: Lorikeet (#8), Customer.io<\/a> (#14), Ada (#40), Crisp (#46) Furthermore, two companies belong into the broader \u201coperations\u201d bucket. These include Delve (#11, compliance automation) and Combinely (#29, accounting).<\/p>\n 3. Vibe coding is no mere consumer trend \u2013 it has landed in workplaces.<\/p>\n One category that\u2019s made a particularly strong enterprise transition is vibe coding. Four companies that target AI app building \u2013 whether for engineers or non-engineers \u2013 made our list: Replit, Cursor, Lovable, and Emergent. And beyond the two biggest model companies (OpenAI and Anthropic), the top product on the list was Replit (#3) \u2013 an agentic product development tool.<\/p>\n On our consumer top 100 list based on web traffic (not revenue), Lovable made it into the top quarter, while Replit found itself further down the list. This order was reversed in our enterprise list. While Lovable did make the list, Replit generated ~15x more revenue than Lovable from the Mercury customers we examined.<\/p>\n Why might that be? We have some theories. Whereas Lovable is more focused on rapid UI and component generation (and arguably provides a lower barrier to entry for pure consumers), Replit goes beyond front-end design by enabling the development of enterprise-grade, fully functional apps, agents, and automations. Its Agent can run autonomously for hours, and it also provides built-in cloud services like databases, authentication, and secure publishing directly within the platform. That combined with Replit\u2019s enterprise controls means the feature set often makes more sense within companies.<\/p>\n We are interested in observing the vibe coding evolution over time. Will the space \u201cfragment\u201d through a rise of platforms for developing different types of applications? Or will the space start to converge, with one winner \u201ctaking most\u201d \u2013 at least in the enterprise realm?<\/p>\n 4. Products are moving from consumer -> prosumer -> enterprise.<\/p>\n The vast majority (nearly 70%) of companies on the list can be adopted by individuals and brought in to teams \u2013 they don\u2019t require an enterprise license to use. In fact, 12 companies in the ranks<\/a> also appeared on our most recent Consumer Top 100, which tracks traffic primarily for B2C AI products.<\/p>\n Of these, 11 companies started out as primarily individual products and have evolved to offer team or enterprise functionality over time. Moreover, several of them are still generating consumer-majority revenue (Cluely, #26, and Midjourney, #28, are two such examples). This is also true for many of the largest model companies, such as OpenAI: as of last October, 75% of revenue<\/a> came from consumers, with recent estimates closer to a 50\/50 split.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/250923-B2B-Top-50-ILG-A-r5.png\")
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\nSales \/ GTM: Instantly (#13), Clay (#25), 11x (#37)
\nRecruiting \/ HR: Micro1 (#9), Metaview (#19), Applaud (#43)<\/p>\n