How AI is changing American entrepreneurship, small business
Travis Di Lombardi-Spicer quickly quit his audio production job after opting out of getting a raise in January 2025. The 30-year-old felt AI could eventually eliminate his job, and he said he wanted to do something proactive instead of pocketing his roughly $75,000 a year from full-time work and freelancing projects and waiting for the end to come.
Doubtful that he would find stability in an uncertain job market, Spicer turned to entrepreneurship. He says he spent $40,000 by selling some personal assets and withdrawing money from his 401(k) and savings to launch a beta version of Spotbookr, his AI-powered consumer spending and advertising analytics business, in May 2025.
According to CNBC’s Make It analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, U.S. entrepreneurs filed 1.56 million job applications from November to January; This is the highest figure in any three-month period since at least 2004. The increase is predictable to some extent; When people struggle to find work, they are more likely to start a business, especially in an environment where the job market is stagnant or there are mass layoffs.
This group of entrepreneurs is different: Anticipating future layoffs, some Americans are quitting their jobs as a preemptive measure to start businesses. Many say AI makes it easier to launch a startup. Others say they will leave on their own terms without facing AI-related layoffs. He says Spicer became an example of both after trying the technology himself.
“Budgets [for audio projects] Spicer says he’s getting lower and lower. “I just wanted to be in control.”
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Entrepreneurship is notoriously risky. Nearly a quarter of new businesses in the US fail to survive their first year Bureau of Labor Statistics data. However Workers are also careful Risks that threaten typical 9-to-5 roles future of work reports and celebrity CEOs predict widespread workforce changes.
In a Go Now survey of 1,012 working U.S. adults conducted in December, four in 10 workers said AI is already available “Alteration, depreciation or overlap” 29% said they were able to effectively handle at least half of their daily responsibilities.
Add in geopolitical instability, rising costs of living and the erosion of trust between employers and employees, and working Americans face a complete storm of unpredictability, says Saikat Chaudhuri, faculty director of the entrepreneurship center at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. After all, record numbers of Americans are seeking more control over their careers, income and time, he says.
“Opportunity cost [of starting a business] It is lower now because the alternatives in the labor market are not as strong,” says Chaudhuri.
Some employees sense the threat of AI and want to quit while they’re still ahead
Five years into her software engineering career at a major national media outlet, Michelle Yeung says she feels unfulfilled and unhappy. He was making enough money ($250,000 a year, including bonuses), but as AI improves, he says he can see more and more of it eventually being replaced. He adds that he feels aimless.
“I wasn’t really pushing myself. I wasn’t happy with how much I was growing or how successful I was,” says Yeung, 29. Other factors beyond artificial intelligence also had an impact on it states that there is job dissatisfaction. Still, “I wanted to move from giving about 20% of myself to giving 200% of myself to something,” he says.
Yeung quit her job in early 2025 and used her savings to open Matcha House, a cafe in New York’s East Village, that July. “I love being able to physically make something and then give it to someone [and] “I build relationships with my clients,” he says.
Yeung and Spicer say they have not yet received a salary from their new jobs. Instead, they say they sacrificed their lifestyle: Spicer’s girlfriend now covers the couple’s expenses. and Yeung moved into a cheaper apartment with a new roommate to cut costs.
Travis Di Lombardi-Spicer has another partially AI-powered business that uses the same predictive modeling as Spotbookr, he says.
Travis Di Lombardi-Spicer
Both say they currently prefer the uncertainty of entrepreneurship to their former roles. He says headlines about companies like Amazon, Salesforce and Block, which cited artificial intelligence that cumulatively laid off tens of thousands of workers last year, partly triggered Spicer’s decision to leave his previous career.
Todd McCracken, president and CEO of the National Small Business Association, an advocacy group, says corporate employment is less stable than it used to be, fueling some people’s tendency to strike out on their own. The US added 116,000 new jobs in 2025, up from 1.46 million in 2024. Layoffs announced in January reached their highest monthly level at the beginning of the year since 2009, according to data from global employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
“In terms of national culture, I think there is a shift away from large bureaucratic institutions towards a culture of entrepreneurship and startups,” says McCracken.
Some entrepreneurs say AI could help ‘fill the gaps’ in their skillsets
He says the technology can help create basic websites or business plans without the need for prior expertise. In some contexts, it can handle basic, essential tasks (mostly administrative) that founders would otherwise have to spend extra time or hire and pay people to do themselves.
Shahezad Contractor is the founder and CEO of Philadelphia-based halal restaurant group Cousin’s Food Inc., which had total revenue of more than $4 million in 2025, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. He says he regularly uses AI tools, especially graduate students like Claude, to generate social media content ideas, create training materials for employees, and write marketing copy.
Shahezad Contractor is the founder and CEO of Philadelphia-based halal restaurant group Cousin’s Inc.
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“Before, I would have maybe hired a content writer for some of these functions,” says Contractor, 44, but AI is helping him “fill in the gaps” in his skill set and do it on his own. It’s even using AI to discover new locations and create financial forecasts for existing ones for its restaurant group, which currently includes a pizza and hoagie joint, a barbecue joint and eight burger joints.
The contractor had previously worked in the IT industry for 24 years. He says the spread of artificial intelligence into the tech industry influenced his decision to leave his former career and pursue entrepreneurship in 2024.
More startups, more competition
Benjamin Jones, a professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, says artificial intelligence may help some small business owners, but it won’t guarantee their success in the long run. He notes that more startups also lead to more competition for pre-existing companies.
Chaudhuri echoes the same sentiment: “We have launched more startups than ever before in the last two decades, but the stock market is also more concentrated than ever before.”
But Jones says entrepreneurship requires risk and failure. “It’s hard to know what will work until you try it,” he says. “That’s the nature of adventure” when you start a new job.
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