This group of workers is winning the AI adoption race

After spending much of his career in marketing, Daniel Hebert pivoted into Software as a Service (SaaS) sales for a high-growth startup in 2018. But what started out as a dream job soon turned into a nightmare.

Like many tech startups, the business went from growth mode to scaling down as the market turned in 2022. As the head of the sales team, Hebert found himself on the front lines of that cost-cutting campaign.

“I would be assigned a team and have to fire half the people. Then I’d have to rebuild the process and rebuild the team. I did three or four cycles of that in 15 months, and I just got so insanely burnt out,” he says. “I just randomly started getting [stress-induced] vertigo, to the point where I was bedridden for days at a time. Like, I couldn’t stand up without falling over.”

Though he was just a couple of months shy of a big payday when the company was set to be acquired, Hebert resigned and began offering independent sales coaching services in early 2023. 

“In the very early days, I used AI a lot for brainstorming: figuring out, like, how do I market this thing?” he says. “Then it became kind of like a marketing editor, and then I started using it with my clients. And from there, it went wild.”

As he got more comfortable with the technology, Hebert says he started to look for ways he could leverage it to scale his offering. “If I want to increase my income as a coach, I have to add more coaching hours, and there’s so many hours I can coach before I max out,” he says.“ So if I want to scale my income, I have to do it in a way that doesn’t require my time.”

Hebert says he had lots of ideas for tech products over the years, but never had the time, resources, or capacity to build them. That is, until he became a solopreneur and learned how to use Lovable, an AI-powered app builder. 

“I could actually build functioning B2B SaaS software, and it completely changed everything for me,” he says. “I could now build a handful of these tools and get some subscribers, and have this portfolio of apps generating income without me having to add more coaching hours.”

AI is widely expected to be a game changer for businesses of all shapes and sizes, enabling new kinds of productivity and revenue. But that transformation is already well underway among solopreneurs.

That’s because those who are independently employed don’t have the practical constraints that hold back those operating in traditional organizations, like legal compliance, or a lengthy rollout process of new tools involving large groups of people and many teams. They also enjoy more direct financial rewards from being early AI adopters.  

Why solopreneurs are winning the AI race

In a recent survey conducted by online freelance marketplace Upwork, 90% of freelancers said AI is helping them learn new skills faster, and 88% said it positively impacted their careers. Furthermore, 34% strongly agree that AI gives them an edge, compared with 28% of those who are traditionally employed.

Overall, 54% of independently employed professionals self-report advanced AI proficiency, compared with 38% of those who are independently employed.

“The data overwhelmingly shows that independent talent is adopting AI at higher rates,” says Gabby Burlacu, a senior researcher at the Upwork Research Institute and one of the study’s authors. “They are faster at adopting it, and they are also more proficient in finding ways to use these tools to improve their work, and actually embedding them in their workflows when we compare them to full-time employees.”

As traditional organizations sort through how to deploy which AI tools and embark on lengthy integration and change management campaigns, solopreneurs are taking it upon themselves to experiment on their own.

“They are pursuing self-development—which we’re seeing across the board—at much higher rates than full-time employees who tend to rely more on organizational learning and development,” Burlacu says. “The tools are available to everyone, but the ability to unlock their power and do better work comes from being in control of how you work, how you learn. That’s the game changer.”

Not just for knowledge workers 

While knowledge industry workers are the most likely to latch onto the technology, solopreneurs of all shapes and sizes are finding ways to grow their business using AI. 

According to a study conducted by business insurance provider Simply Business, about 37.5% of independently employed knowledge workers, such as accountants, IT specialists and legal advisers, are using AI in their day-to-day operations. At the same time, so are 29.7% of those with independent creative or lifestyle ventures—like artists, coaches, and photographers—and 14% of tradespeople and contractors. 

Those figures, however, only capture intentional adoption, and don’t include those that are using other software tools to run their business, which are increasingly integrating AI functionality. 

According to the survey, more than half use digital marketing tools, and another 39% leverage accounting software. “Some of those, quite frankly, have AI built in that they may not even realize they’re using,” says Dana Edwards, group chief technology officer at Simply Business. “In our 2025 survey, 23% [of solopreneurs] were using AI, and if you kind of follow the trend line, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were in the 60 or 70% range in 2026.” 

AI offers solopreneurs direct value

In a recent survey of solopreneurs who are already using AI conducted by Zoom and Upwork, 93% agreed or strongly agreed that the technology is critical to their success.

Furthermore, 75% said it has reduced costs, 89% said it’s helped them expand into new markets, 78% said it allowed them to automate repetitive tasks, and 74% said it’s directly contributed to a new product or service offering.

“Seven out of 10 of those individuals are already seeing revenue impact from incorporating AI in their day-to-day operations, and we’re just at the start,” says Lisa Scheiring, Zoom’s new global small business advisor and chief solo officer. “Technology now is enabling those individuals to build durable, scalable businesses that can compete directly with some of the larger enterprises in their categories.”

Scheiring says the establishment of her position, along with Zoom’s recently announced Solopreneur 50 recognition program, are a testament to the impact the company believes businesses of one will have in the AI era.

She adds that it’s not just the lack of traditional constraints that allows solopreneurs to leverage AI more readily; it’s also about personality and risk appetite.

“If you are bold enough to take on a solo venture, you are already someone who is willing to learn new things and change and grow. Those are the same skills that you need to learn how to use AI,” Scheiring says. 

“Someone who is willing to take that step forward and be a solopreneur, those same capabilities—when applied to a new technology like AI—will help them move further, faster.”

That proved the case for Hebert, who went from burned-out sales professional to independent sales coach to launching his own tech products in less than three years.

“You used to have to raise a lot of money and hire a big team to do things like this—now you just need an idea and the patience to actually learn the AI skills to make it happen,” he says. 

“That’s the superpower of the solopreneur.”