How Brex is keeping up with AI by embracing the ‘messiness’

Brex transformed its software procurement process to keep pace with rapidly evolving AI tools. The company abandoned its traditional months-long evaluation cycles in favor of faster vetting frameworks and employee-driven adoption. Engineers receive $50 monthly budgets to choose from approved AI tools, allowing the company to identify valuable solutions through actual usage patterns rather than lengthy assessments. This approach has led to testing around 1,000 AI tools while canceling 5-10 larger deployments that didn't prove their worth.