Small businesses should be a much bigger part of the ‘AI transformation’ conversation
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. A look at the AI landscape for small businesses So much of the conversation around the great AI transformation of business has centered on enterprises, meaning companies with more than 500 employees. That makes sense: For AI and cloud companies, landing a large enterprise customer can mean securing a significant stream of recurring revenue. But if we’re really talking about AI reinventing work and making everyone more productive, small and medium-sized businesses should be a much bigger part of the conversation. According to the Small Business Administration, around 36 million small businesses operate in the U.S., employing 46% of private-sector workers. Most of those companies are very small. Federal data shows that about 88% have fewer than 20 employees. Universities and consultancies have, of course, studied how and to what extent small businesses are using AI tools. Research from 2024 formed a consensus on the idea that relatively few small businesses had meaningfully begun adopting them. But surveys conducted in 2026 paint a more complicated picture. A recent Goldman Sachs study of 10,000 small businesses found that three-quarters are now using AI, with 84% citing productivity and efficiency gains. Still, only 14% said they had integrated AI into their core operations. Another study, from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), found that only a quarter of small businesses reported using AI tools at all. (NFIB typically surveys very small traditional businesses like plumbers and caterers while Goldman may capture more digitally engaged firms, like e-commerce retailers). Many small business owners are probably aware of the growing ecosystem of AI products designed for smaller operations. Intuit, Zapier, HubSpot, Lindy, and Microsoft all compete in this space. Man