Key Takeaways:
A growing class of entrepreneurs is using artificial intelligence to replace entire teams, launching companies that generate millions in revenue with zero employees.
Ben Broca launched a company last December offering AI tools to entrepreneurs. He has added 10,000 paying customers and is on track to bring in $10 million in revenue this year. He has not hired a single employee. AI handles his emails, writes and debugs code, fields customer requests, signs up subscribers and processes refunds.
"Compromises make lukewarm results," Broca, 40, who runs the business from his living room in Sausalito, California, said.
An analysis by payments firm Stripe found that the number of solo operators on its platform generating more than $1 million in revenue doubled between 2023 and 2025. Those crossing the $10 million threshold nearly tripled in the same period. Stripe's chief economist Ernie Tedeschi said AI has become a "built-in business partner" for founders who previously lacked the contacts or expertise to launch companies.
The trend is most pronounced in technology. Census Bureau data analyzed by Bank of America Institute economist Taylor Bowley shows new business applications in the information sector jumped nearly 45 percent over the past year — the biggest increase of any industry. At the same time, the share of information-sector applicants planning to hire workers has experienced the sharpest decline among all measured industries.
A study of 50,000 startups by Harvard Business School associate professor Rembrand Koning found that AI-focused companies operated with 25 percent fewer employees. Koning said a soft hiring environment has also encouraged more people to try launching businesses.
The economics of going solo
Running a one-person company with AI can still be expensive. Broca said he was losing money on many customer accounts while paying to access Anthropic's Claude model, which charges based on usage. He has since switched to free open-source AI models from China. He has raised $30 million from investors and saved millions in salary by not hiring software engineers.
Claire Vo, 41, used AI to code an app that helps companies manage product documentation and design. She put it online for $1 a month and within weeks thousands of people had downloaded it. Nearly three years later, her company has 100,000 users and is on track to make seven figures in profit this year, with AI handling marketing, sales and customer support. She hired one engineer after nine months of running the business alone.
"People over-index on how easy AI is and under-index on how much I did to get to this point," Vo said.
The labor market question
The rise of solo AI-powered businesses raises questions about employment. An EY survey of 500 US-based entrepreneurs with annual revenue of $5 million or more found that 88 percent expect their workforce to grow over the next 12 months, even as 42 percent redesign roles to combine human and technological capabilities. More than three in four have at least partially integrated AI into their businesses.
Yet the solo founder trend suggests a structural shift. Julian Weisser, who runs a San Francisco-based accelerator for solo tech founders, said his program attracted 4,500 applicants for 10 slots in its most recent cycle — nearly five times the number it drew when it launched in May 2025. "The bar for getting started has never been lower," he said.
For investors, the implications are mixed. AI enables faster company formation with less capital, but also creates lower barriers to entry. Troy Johnston, 40, who runs an AI-assisted credit card benefits app from Orlando, Florida, that generates about $3,000 a month in profit, described the dynamic as a double-edged sword. "Everybody has the sword and we all have the ability to unsheathe Excalibur now," he said.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
