The small business boom

Americans filed 5.7 million applications to start new businesses last year, the highest in two decades, driven by pandemic-era shifts and accelerated by generative AI, according to Census Bureau data and a recent study from the University of British Columbia and Stockholm School of Economics.

The small business boom Across the country, founders like Ms. Winkler are powering an entrepreneurial renaissance. Jump-started by the pandemic, when a confluence of factors including mass layoffs and remote work led to a flood of business creation, and supercharged by the rise of artificial intelligence, start-up activity is booming after a decades-long slump .Americans filed 5.7 million applications last year to start new businesses, according to the Census Bureau , the most in the two decades the government has kept track. New business applications through the first half of this year continued to climb…More recently, there are signals that A.I. is adding fuel. A recent paper from economists at the University of British Columbia and the Stockholm School of Economics found that generative A.I. was “spurring entrepreneurial activity” in the United States, both by giving rise to new ventures built around the technology and by making it cheaper to start enterprises.“A.I. tools can do very many different things very well,” said Jan Bena, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the study’s authors. “That’s the reason why you see so much entry.” According to a recent report from Gusto , a small-business payroll and benefits service, nearly 60 percent of founders on its platform who started businesses last year said they used A.I., and half said the technology made it cheaper and faster. Here is more from Sydney Ember at the NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/business/economy/american-small-business-boom.html . Via Josef.