How AI Could Create the First One-Person Unicorn

The technology is allowing entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses on their own.

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Ms Sarah Gwilliam is neither a software engineer nor, she confesses, does she "speak AI". But after her father died recently, she got the spark of an idea for creating a generative artificial intelligence (AI) start-up that would help others like her handle their grief and sort out their late loved ones' affairs.

Call it wedding planning for funerals.

Her firm, Solace, is still more of an early-stage start-up than an established business. But besides herself, almost no human being is helping her build it.

She has joined an AI-powered incubator, Audos, which decided her idea was promising. Its bots helped to set her up online and on Instagram. If her idea works out, the incubator will not only provide capital, but its AI agents will also support Ms Gwilliam with product development, sales, marketing and back-office work—all in exchange for a royalty.

She does not need staff. In effect, AI helped her co-found the company. "I can't tell you how empowering it was," she says.

As is its custom, Silicon Valley has already adopted a neologism that describes one-person founders like Ms Gwilliam: They are "solopreneurs". In tech circles, there are bets on which of them is likely to create the first single-person unicorn, an unlisted firm worth more than US$1 billion (S$1.29 billion).

Some hope that generative AI will make starting a business so cheap and hassle-free that anyone will be able to become an entrepreneur much as anyone can become a YouTuber—a breath of fresh air in America's concentrated business landscape. Whether people like Ms Gwilliam will be able to escape the suffocating grip of the tech giants, however, is another matter.