Brex completely changed its approach to software procurement to ensure it wouldn’t get left behind. Brex CTO James Reggio told that the company initially tried to assess these software tools through its usual procurement strategy. The startup quickly discovered its months-long piloting process was just not going to work. The company started by coming up with a new framework for data processing agreements and legal validations for bringing on AI tools, Reggio said. This allowed Brex to vet potential AI tools more quickly and get them into the hands of testers faster. Reggio said the company uses a “superhuman product-market-fit test” to figure out what tools are worth investing in beyond the pilot program. This approach gives employees a much larger role in deciding what tools the company should adopt based on where they are finding value, he added. “We’re basically, I would say, about two years into this new era where there’s 1,000 AI tools within our company. And we’ve definitely canceled and not renewed maybe five to 10 different larger deployments.” “By delegating that spending authority to the individuals who are going to be leveraging this, they make the optimal decisions for optimizing their workflows,” Reggio said. This approach has helped the company figure out where it needs broader licensing deals for software too based on a more accurate headcount of how many engineers are using what.