Briefs · Entrepreneurship
The one-person company has arrived, and AI lowered the drawbridge
Nasdaq has opened a new Economic Institute, and its first finding is a quiet revolution: solo business applications are up more than 20% since early 2025, and almost all of them are one-person businesses.
The driver, Nasdaq says, is generative AI. It has lowered the bar to starting a company so far that a single person can now do what once took a team: write the copy, build the product, answer the customers, and keep the books. The solo founder is no longer a hobbyist with a laptop, but rather a firm of one.
Tech, finance and professional services account for nearly half of the recent monthly increase. Meanwhile applications from businesses that expect to hire have stayed largely flat. The new companies are not hiring; they are replacing hiring.
This is the Mittelstand, atomised. Not factories and family firms, but individuals, armed with models, competing globally from a desk.
Conclusion: the smallest company in history is now one person, and it is growing fast and furious.
Read the original at Nasdaq / GlobeNewswire
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