Brex Ditches “Tens of Thousands” of SMBs in Favor of VC Clients

For startups looking for financial services and technology to get their business of the ground, Brex has long been a reliable ally. Since its founding in 2017, the company has provided cash management accounts and business charge cards for tech startups, and has helped launch innumerable such small firms.

Now, just three months after it announced plans for expansion into software, Brex has announced that they will no longer be providing aid to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Instead, according to Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Henrique Dubugras, Brex will be focusing exclusively on startups that have access to venture capital or other funding sources. Indeed, Dubugras indicated that these two categories of client—small startups and larger, better-funded ones—essentially represent two different business models, and Brex would no longer be able to support both simultaneously.

“We got to a situation where we realized that if we didn’t choose one, we would do a poor job for both,” Dubugras said in a report. “So we decided to focus on our core customer that are the start-ups that are growing.” To back that commitment to these “core customers,” Brex is diverting previously occupied resources onto its SaaS business.