Enterprise AI spend hits $37B as buying beats building: Menlo Ventures' 2025 report
kylegawley · x · 2026-09-29
Menlo Ventures released its 2025 State of Generative AI in the Enterprise report:
- Enterprise AI spend surged from $1.7B in 2023 to $37B in 2025, now 6% of the global SaaS market.
- Over half of that ($19B) goes to AI apps, signaling enterprises prioritize immediate productivity gains over long-term infrastructure bets.
- Buy vs. build flipped: purchasing rose from 47% to 76%, with enterprises reverting from internal builds to off-the-shelf solutions.
- Coding is generative AI's first killer use case, with $4B in enterprise spend.
- Anthropic leads enterprise LLM API share at 40% vs. OpenAI's 27%.
Despite bubble fears (the MIT 95%-failure study rattled markets), demand-side data shows broad adoption, real revenue, and productivity gains at scale — a boom, not a bubble.
Related event: Enterprises Shift to Buying Over Building AI as Spending Hits $37B(2 posts)→
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