In the United States, more one-person businesses are using artificial intelligence (AI) to operate without employees. AI is handling everything from accounting to customer support and advertising, allowing entrepreneurs to launch and scale businesses at low cost, an analysis shows.

CNBC reported on Nov. 7 local time that applications to form new businesses that are highly likely to be run without employees in industries heavily affected by AI rose 26.8 percent, to about 281,000 in the first quarter of 2026 from about 222,000 in the first quarter of 2024. Over the same period, applications to form new businesses that are highly likely to hire employees fell 6.4 percent.

Rhea Palagashvili, director of the Labor Policy Project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, explained that applications for businesses likely to operate without employees fell 0.4 percent in construction and wholesale, which were used as comparison groups. She viewed AI as helping individuals do work that used to be handled by teams.

On the ground, cases are emerging in which entrepreneurs use AI to cut labor and outsourcing costs. Alex Whelan, who runs 12 e-commerce brands without employees, expected this year’s revenue to reach $2.5 million to $3.0 million. He uses Anthropic’s Claude for accounting, customer support, advertising and inventory management, and replaces product photography and design work with OpenAI’s image-generation tools.

Whelan said that without AI he would have needed one dedicated employee and outside staff to handle photography, design, accounting and ad management. Traditional product photography costs $2,000 to $5,000, and a designer’s product image production costs $300 to $1,000, he said, adding that profits rise as those costs are reduced.

AI is also being used to expand sales channels. Whelan said that after acquiring the outdoor brand Lone Trail, he revamped its Shopify site with ChatGPT and Claude and improved Meta ad operations. Based on the most recent 30 days, Shopify’s share of sales rose to about 30 percent from about 1 percent. He expected AI use to generate additional annual revenue worth several hundred thousand dollars.

Christine Gindo, who left Microsoft in March and founded the AI adoption consulting company trnsfrmAItn, is using AI for proposal writing, pricing and strategy development. She is also reviewing a plan to assign some labor-intensive client work to AI agents. The scale of business she secured in seven months after founding reached $250,000.

A survey by accounting and invoicing software company FreshBooks also highlighted AI use by solo business owners. About 79 percent of respondents said they tried AI first before asking relevant personnel to handle tasks that were difficult to process directly. Shaheen Javadi-Zadeh, FreshBooks chief executive, said AI allows solo operators to work like organizations far larger than they actually are.

Still, adopting AI does not necessarily lead to fewer hires. Payroll and HR software company Gusto said that small businesses that adopted AI had about 7 percent more employees than a comparison group after one year. Among companies with fewer than 10 employees, the gap was about 10 percent. That suggests AI can help startups begin with minimal staffing while supporting increased hiring as existing businesses grow.

Stanford University economist Erik Brynjolfsson explained that AI increases the number of small producers while also raising the value of platforms that connect them to customers. Platforms that bring together vast numbers of sellers, such as Amazon, can further expand their influence through these agglomeration effects, he said.

Market dynamics by company size could also change. Brynjolfsson said individuals or small teams can do more with fewer people using AI, while large companies can use AI along with economies of scale. He pointed to the possibility that mid-sized companies could see their position narrow. He especially suggested that layers of management responsible for internal coordination could shrink sharply.

AI is lowering staffing burdens needed for startups and business operations while also increasing the influence of large platforms responsible for sales and customer acquisition. Brynjolfsson said platform companies, AI tool providers, solo entrepreneurs and consumers could all benefit in the process. The long-standing formula that company growth means more employees could also change, he said.