The Wall Street Journal reported on July 29 that in the AI era, it is no longer a fantasy for an individual to run an entire company with annual revenue exceeding $1 million, and the market is witnessing the "era of solo entrepreneurs." Stripe's estimates show that in 2023, about 4 million Americans had self-employment as their main source of income and annual sales exceeding $100,000, nearly doubling from around 2 million people in the early 2010s.

Even more impressive is the explosive growth in the high-income segment. The number of single-person businesses with annual sales over $1 million is expected to be twice that of 2023 by 2025; the number of sole proprietors with sales over $5 million and $10 million is also expected to be about three times that of 2023. Taking the 2019 figure as "1," the proportion of companies with annual sales exceeding $5 million increased from about 2.5 to about 5.3 between 2023 and 2025, while those exceeding $10 million rose from about 2.5 to about 4.8.

Industries with higher AI adoption see faster growth in startup applications

The report suggests that this growth wave is clearly related to the spread of artificial intelligence. Stripe compared AI adoption rates across industries with new business application growth rates, revealing a clear positive correlation—industries with higher AI adoption generally saw faster growth in new business applications. This means AI tools are effectively lowering the barriers to entrepreneurship, compressing tasks that once required a team into work that one person can handle.

However, there are exceptions among different industries. Manufacturing has a high AI adoption rate but saw slower growth in new business applications than expected, possibly due to the industry's reliance on heavy assets and physical supply chains. In contrast, transportation and warehousing showed higher-than-expected growth in applications, likely benefiting from the rapid implementation of AI scheduling and route optimization in logistics scenarios. When one person plus a set of AI tools can replace the output of an entire team, the definition of the word "company" may be being redefined.