How AI is powering the rise of one-person companies

As the sole employee of what is essentially a large, complex business, Arnaud Rubeck often wishes there were two of him. That way, headcount would double.

He travels from his home base in Singapore to international meetings, fairs and conferences to let the market know about his business, ChaseFlow. He is always available for conversations with clients, investors and other stakeholders, and he is happy to be the face of the business.

At the same time, he also manages finance, legal, marketing, sales, operations, IT and more, with the help of a few AI platforms and agents.

ChaseFlow is a managed accounts-receivable service that manages B2B invoices from issue through payment, including reminders, overdue follow-up and pre-escalation.

Every invoice is registered with the TradePact Network — “think Visa or Mastercard for credit control,” Rubeck says — and is chased by a neutral third-party participant operating under its protocol and rules.

The company’s ambitions to scale into the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and beyond are considerable, even though its workforce is not.

When the business requires deep expertise such as a security audit or specific legal advice, Rubeck brings it in. 

“They always say for entrepreneurship you need to hire an A-team,” he says. “But an A-team is extremely expensive.”

In a business environment where the acronym OPC, meaning a “one-person company”, is broadly recognised, governments are beginning to appreciate the future potential of such a model.

OPC support in China

China is proving to be a fertile environment for the OPC model. This is perhaps not surprising, considering CPA Australia’s 2025–26 Asia-Pacific Small Business Survey reports 48 per cent of Chinese mainland businesses ranked AI as their heaviest investment in 2025, the highest among 11 APAC markets.

In China, numerous local governments have established dedicated OPC communities and support programs. A recent report from the State Administration for Market Regulation says the country’s OPC ecosystem expanded rapidly during 2026, with specialised communities appearing across numerous cities.

As of March 2026, the report states, “23 Chinese Mainland cities had launched OPC policies, with over 100 policy measures unveiled”.

Manufacturing hub Suzhou is building 30 AI solopreneur communities to develop a target of 1000 AI one-person enterprises by 2028. Pudong in Shanghai is offering 300,000 yuan (A$62,000) to cover computing costs. Wuhan is introducing special loans for OPCs and offering to help cover losses.

“Regulatory and policy shifts in China also lower barriers,” says Collin Jin FCPA, partner at Deloitte China and president of CPA Australia’s East and Central China Committee.

“Revised company law simplifies business registration, while local governments offer computing subsidies, shared workspaces and OPC-oriented incubation support for solo entrepreneurs.”

The OPC model is also attracting attention elsewhere in Asia, Jin says, including in India and Singapore. Many entrepreneurs are deciding to go it alone, despite the challenges and risks.

A major driving factor behind the growth of the AI-powered one-person company is the changing job market, says Professor Sun Sun Lim, vice-president of partnerships and engagement at Singapore Management University.

Graduates are hearing that there is no longer as much need for them as there once was. Their roles — the sort of tasks that lawyers, accountants, engineers and so on once used to cut their teeth on — are slowly being absorbed by technology.

“There is a drying up of entry-level work,” Lim says. “That is where AI use can be quite high in terms of highly automated or automatable tasks, and companies are hiring humans more for experience.” 

Technology need not spell the end of a young person’s career dream, though. In fact, it can enable it.

 

"Traditional business growth equates scaling with hiring more employees, expanding physical premises and raising external capital to drive larger headcount. For OPCs, growth decouples revenue expansion from workforce enlargement."

 

“When you think about the future of work, we have to contemplate whether people will still be joining large companies or might there actually be situations where people can create multiple versions of themselves?” Lim says.

“Professionals can augment themselves with AI capabilities to offer services they previously would have provided as an employee. Instead of being a marketing person, they can set up an entire company as a marketing services provider by using AI agents. There is an agent to do the finance, the relationship development, the product development, the marketing and customer fulfilment, and so on.”

In China, Lim says, some provincial governments see OPC development “as an alternative employment pathway”.

While Singapore’s approach is less direct, it is still supportive.

“I do not necessarily see a concerted, focused drive to promote the growth of one-person companies in Singapore,” Lim says. “Here, it is more of a drive to promote entrepreneurship at large and for SMEs to augment themselves with AI.”

The new generation of OPCs solves an age-old issue for small businesses. Previously, entrepreneurs simply did not have the time in each day to do the work required to achieve significant growth.

Jin says AI, intelligent agents, cloud infrastructure and software-as-a-service platforms have forever altered that equation.

“Traditional small firms earn linear revenue tied to labour input and hit scaling ceilings as output correlates with working hours,” he says. “By contrast, OPCs monetise replicable digital systems rather than personal time, enjoying falling marginal costs as sales expand.”

Of course, those implications extend to the cost base. A conventional growing business that takes on staff also brings payroll costs, a need for larger premises, equipment, training expenses and more. An AI-powered OPC shifts that expenditure towards technology, potentially resulting in unusually lean processes with operational cost reductions through generative AI.

“Most OPCs start with minimal initial investment, achieving high gross margins without raising external funds,” Jin says. “Their core assets are intangible: prompt workflows, digital products and proprietary know-how instead of physical inventory or equipment.”

Human abilities

It would be a mistake to assume Rubeck uses technology indiscriminately. He employs it to make him more productive, particularly in areas where he previously would have required the assistance of an expert. However, that does not mean expertise no longer matters.

His approach to winning customers, for example, is fundamentally human.

“I do it extremely old-school,” he says. Rubeck estimates that he spends half his time developing and fine-tuning the ChaseFlow product and the other half building relationships.

The contrast highlights an important but little recognised fact about the solopreneur business model. As technology makes execution cheaper, faster and more efficient, it means competitive advantage comes from the passion of the entrepreneur and their human abilities.

“The technology is good enough,” Rubeck says. “Now, the most important challenge lies in distribution.”

 

"One person can only amplify themselves to a degree, but it is not that scalable. I do not think one-person companies are a threat to big corporations — not yet. I think the amplification of human networks in a company is incalculable in terms of its value. But one person, not so much."

 

Technology, he says, can be copied. Relationships, networks, brands and distribution strategies are considerably harder to replicate. “Technology is just the tool for productivity, it is not the proposition,” he says. “You are not selling technology and you are not selling AI.”

For finance professionals accustomed to seeing assets on a company’s register, there is a fascinating conversion with OPCs that likely have little in the way of infrastructure but potentially outsized value in the founder’s relationships, experience, processes and skill set.

This poses challenges for lenders and investors, too. Jin says some Chinese financial institutions are beginning to experiment with credit products suited to these businesses, moving away from collateral-based assessment and making greater use of digital and operational data.

“Even so,” he says, “systemic valuation frameworks for their intangible digital assets are still under development, creating persistent financing gaps for many solo-run businesses.”

Unique risks

In China, Jin says, “regulatory sandbox and incubation programs help mitigate compliance risks for solo digital ventures”. However, as for any business, there are plenty of other traps.

“Operationally, single-person dependency creates a single point of failure,” Jin says. “Personal illness, burnout or turnover halts all workflows, with no internal backup to sustain client delivery.”

OPCs are also likely to be reliant on single platforms for particular services, so changes in pricing or governance of third-party services may expose those businesses to greater potential damage. Cybersecurity and governance risks are further issues.

“Solo operators often lack dedicated data governance, exposing client data to leaks, and AI-generated output may trigger copyright or regulatory violations,” Jin says. “Without internal review mechanisms, flawed AI outputs can cause contractual liabilities and reputational damage.”

Lim has seen entrepreneurs use AI systems to form a virtual board that helps out with audit, investment or fundraising advice. That can create its own issues.

“Obviously, AI’s guidance could be quite generic,” she says. “When it comes to compliance requirements, you have got to make sure that contextual, localised knowledge is enriched before you can trust the guidance it offers.”

Another risk is much more human: solo entrepreneurship can be lonely. Lim’s experience overseeing SMU’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship indicates that isolation is a real challenge. “Nobody will be as energised by the business as the founder. They have got to always be the ones keeping the flame alight.

Yet there will be those quiet moments where they doubt themselves and wonder whether it is all worth it, and why they did not take the path more tested,” Lim says. “For that reason, aside from equipping OPCs with concrete knowledge around running their business, we also want to provide them with support for mental wellbeing, because as a founder, you can feel quite isolated.”

With AI agents acting as collaborators, if solo entrepreneurs can navigate through the lonely and risk-filled landscape of the OPC world, they may redefine the limits of scale.

“First, we must be wary of survivorship bias,” Lim says. “Look at one success story on its own and you will think everyone can do this, but you are failing to see all of those who fell by the wayside.

“One person can only amplify themselves to a degree, but it is not that scalable. I do not think one-person companies are a threat to big corporations — not yet. I think the amplification of human networks in a company is incalculable in terms of its value. But one person, not so much.”

The more interesting take on the OPC situation, Jin says, is that OPCs could alter our definition of successful business growth.

“Traditional business growth equates scaling with hiring more employees, expanding physical premises and raising external capital to drive larger headcount,” he says. “For OPCs, growth decouples revenue expansion from workforce enlargement.”

That has consequences well beyond entrepreneurship. If a company can increase revenue and profit substantially while retaining a workforce of one, business prosperity no longer automatically produces employment growth.

Headcount is no longer part of the discussion. Capital requirements shrink. Cost structures change and intangible capabilities become increasingly important to real value.

A successful company does not have to be a larger one. For some, one person is enough.

 

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