🔥 So Where Is All Of Our AI Money Going? It’s Going To These Places.

Andreessen Horowitz’s AI Application Spending Report shows how startups really spend on AI. 

Using data from over 200,000 companies, it spotlighted the top 50 AI apps driving real adoption: focusing on tools businesses use, not the infrastructure behind them.

The report showed that horizontal AI apps like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity lead spending, while vertical tools focus more on augmenting human work than replacing it. 

▪️Vibe coding platforms such as Replit and Cursor are rapidly gaining traction, signaling a rise in “citizen developers,” and most top AI apps follow a consumer-to-enterprise path that starts with individuals before scaling to teams.

▪️Horizontal AI tools like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity dominate startup spending at about 60%, while vertical apps focus on specific roles such as customer service, sales, and HR; often augmenting human work rather than replacing it.

▪️Vibe coding tools like Replit and Cursor are quickly gaining traction among startups, signaling the rise of “citizen developers” who can build AI apps without traditional engineering barriers.

▪️Consumer → Prosumer → Enterprise Trajectory. Most top AI apps start with individual users before expanding to teams, showing a clear consumer-to-enterprise adoption path across the market.

Overall, the report paints a picture of an AI market still wide open, with startups favoring tools that enhance human work rather than replace it. 

The rise of vibe coding shows how fast the line between developer and non-developer is blurring, while the consumer-to-enterprise path highlights how adoption often starts with individuals before scaling to teams. 

For builders, success may come from either broad, horizontal tools or deeply specialized vertical ones; as long as they make real work faster, smarter, and more accessible.

Read the report: https://a16z.com/the-ai-application-spending-report-where-startup-dollars-really-go/