“The one mistake we could make is to overthink this,” said Brex CTO James Reggio. “Spend six to nine months evaluating everything very carefully before we deploy it and you don’t know what the world is going to look like nine months from now.”
Brex found it needed to rework how software made its way into the company. The procurement process was too rigid for the pace of AI development, and leadership moved quickly to change it.
As generative AI tools gained traction in 2023, Brex’s standard procurement approach became a bottleneck. Reggio said the company’s piloting and compliance reviews often took longer than teams’ interest in the tools themselves.
“In the first year following ChatGPT, the procurement process itself would actually run so long that the teams that were asking to procure a tool lost interest in the tool by the time we actually got through all of the necessary internal controls,” he said.
To address that, Brex revised its internal process. It developed a streamlined legal and compliance framework and gave engineers a monthly budget to test pre-approved AI tools without having to wait for centralized sign-off. Broader licenses were only negotiated after repeated usage by multiple teams.
“We go deep with the folks who are getting the most value out of the tool to figure out whether it is actually unique enough to retain,” Reggio said. “We’ve definitely canceled and not renewed maybe five to ten different larger deployments.”
Brex currently runs hundreds of AI tool instances internally. Reggio said the company avoids premature commitments and lets usage data guide procurement. He emphasized that the process isn’t always clean or straightforward.
“It’s messy,” Reggio said. “And that’s fine. We’ve learned that trying to make it perfect up front just slows everything down. You have to let teams try things, discard what doesn’t work, and move quickly on what does.”
That mindset of tolerating short-term chaos in favor of long-term clarity has become central to Brex’s operating culture. and lets usage data guide procurement. That decentralization has helped reduce friction while surfacing which tools actually improve developer productivity. “By delegating that spending authority to the individuals who are going to be leveraging this, they make the optimal decisions for optimizing their workflows,” he said.
The AI tooling shift came alongside a broader overhaul of how Brex operates. CEO Pedro Franceschi, who stepped into the sole CEO role in early 2024, led a multi-year effort to restructure how decisions are made and how the company defines quality.
“When we zoomed out, it became clear we were spread across too many things that didn’t matter,” Franceschi said on a podcast with Kleiner Perkins partner Juben. “Once we focused our resources, chose fewer bets, and had the courage to concentrate, things started to move faster and better.”
The company removed nearly two layers of management and eliminated roles focused solely on people management. Those who remained were expected to lead by example and contribute directly to the work. “A great CTO can code, a great sales head can close deals,” Franceschi said. “Work product is king.”
Franceschi also changed the compensation philosophy at Brex. The company placed a heavier emphasis on equity, reducing cash-heavy packages and capping salaries at the executive level including his own. Bonuses were reserved for sales, with no general bonus structure for other departments.
Brex also shifted its product development cycle. Instead of continuously shipping small updates, the company now focuses on three major product releases each year. Franceschi personally reviews key roadmap decisions, acting as a kind of editor-in-chief for the product direction.
The strategic reset helped the company expand beyond its original customer base. Brex, once seen primarily as a startup-focused fintech, now serves over 150 public companies and is building out offerings for larger enterprises and government clients. Franceschi said that shift required internal clarity about who Brex was serving and what those customers valued.
“The startup roller coaster is real,” he said. “One day you’re the best company in the world, the next you think you suck.”
The turbulence also prompted changes in how Franceschi approached his role as a founder. In 2021, he experienced a mental health crisis that left him unable to sleep or function. He began therapy, changed his habits, and introduced structure into his routine: meditation, daily exercise, no alcohol, and a disciplined sleep schedule. “I treat my job like a professional athlete would,” he said.
Brex has not announced a public listing, but Franceschi said that the company is being built with long-term public market readiness in mind. “Anyone can go public. The hard part is being a great public company.”
Today, Brex continues to hire and evolve. Its decentralized software procurement strategy has helped the company stay current on rapidly shifting AI trends while avoiding unnecessary vendor lock-in. Internally, it’s part of a larger philosophy: optimize for learning, ship what works, and remove what doesn’t.
“We’re two years into this new era,” Reggio said. “And we’re still learning.”
