Until recently, growing a company usually meant building a large team. Now Artificial intelligence (AI) is making it easier for founders to launch alone, and many continue that way even as they grow into million-dollar businesses with just one employee, working from home and relying on software instead of staff.
Last December, Ben Broca founded a company that provides AI tools for entrepreneurs. Within a few months, it had attracted 10,000 paying customers and was projected to reach $10 million in revenue this year. Despite its rapid growth, the company still has no other employees.
The 40-year-old founder is part of a new wave of entrepreneurs using AI to build and run businesses on their own. AI tools help him answer emails, write and debug code, handle customer requests, register new users, and process refunds when problems arise.
From the living room of his home in Sausalito, California, Broca can make every decision without compromise.
“I think compromise often leads to half-baked outcomes,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
THE ONE-PERSON COMPANY IS GROWING
In the past, reaching a certain scale usually required a full staff. AI is changing that by letting more people start businesses on their own and keep running them solo even as operations expand.
According to an analysis by Stripe, the payments platform has thousands of one-person businesses generating more than $1 million in revenue. Their numbers doubled between 2023 and 2025. Over the same period, the number of one-person businesses surpassing $10 million in revenue nearly tripled.
Ernie Tedeschi, Stripe’s chief economist, said that in the past, people without strong business experience or networks often did not know how to turn an idea into a real company.
“Now AI can act like a business partner that is always there to help,” Tedeschi said.
AI’s ability to handle administrative work is helping founders launch and operate companies across many fields. The trend is especially visible in technology, where AI can also take on important technical tasks such as coding.
Based on U.S. Census Bureau data, Taylor Bowley, an economist at the Bank of America Institute, found that new business registrations in the information sector rose nearly 45% over the past year, the fastest growth across all industries. At the same time, the share of those new businesses planning to hire fell more sharply than in any other sector tracked.
The data does not separately identify one-person businesses. Still, in technology and elsewhere, the number of new registrations with hiring plans has been nearly flat, while the rest have generally increased. Economists say that is a clear sign the one-person business model is becoming more common.
COST, COMPETITION AND JOBS
Running a business alone with AI support is not always easy or cheap. Broca said that for many customers, the fees charged were not enough to cover the cost of using Anthropic’s Claude tools to handle requests. Anthropic and other AI providers charge based on usage, so Broca later switched to free open-source AI models from China.
Broca said his company has raised $30 million from investors. At the same time, not hiring a software team has saved the company millions of dollars in labor costs.
AI makes it easier for one person to start a company, but it also makes that business easier for competitors to copy. That risk worries founders like Troy Johnston, who runs an AI app business alone in Orlando, Florida.
“Now everyone has the tools, and everyone can use them,” said Johnston, 40.
Johnston has used AI to build an app that helps users maximize credit card rewards. His company has no employees, generates about $3,000 in monthly profit, and continues to grow.
The broader job-market impact of one-person businesses remains unclear. AI is creating new startup opportunities while also allowing each company to operate with fewer people.
A study of 50,000 startups co-authored by Rembrand Koning, a professor at Harvard Business School, found that AI-focused companies tend to use 25% fewer employees than other startups.
According to Koning, a weak job market and a longer job search process are also pushing more people toward self-employment. Burnout after the pandemic, a reassessment of life priorities, and the rise of AI are also contributing to the trend.
Source: VnEconomy
