Thanks to the advent of cloud computing and distributed digital infrastructure, the of a person’s minor business It is far from a new idea. Cheap computational, remote partnerships, API payment processing, social media and e -commerce markets have facilitated “Go Poing Anall” as a businessman.
But what about the escalation of a person’s business in something more confident-a unicorn business?
Historically, this would be an undoubtedly difficult task, due to the required skills and resources, not only for the escalation of a product but also for the development and maintenance of a sufficiently rich customer base. But the AI agents could disconnect the potential salmon-parents of the world.
AI agents are about integrating human work flows into software, releasing humans to make more in less time. Agents can be assigned work and can make decisions with different degrees of autonomy. Many AI agents could even work together in complementary tasks, paving the way for a real job completely autonomous.
To one interview Last year with co -founder Reddit Alexis Ohanian, Openai’s Sam Altman predicted this exact scenario.
“In my little group conversation with my friends CEO of technology, there is this betting pool for the first year that there is a company of a billions of dollars,” Altman said. ‘Which would be unthinkable without AI – and now [it] It will happen. ”
In a discussion at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, a group of businessmen and investors also discussed the prospect of a billion dollar business-and, most importantly, what can mean for the future of employment.
To people we trust
Recent history reveals a number of billions of dollars. Microsoft broke $ 2.5 billion for Minecraft Mojang, who had been reported 40 workers. Facebook acquired Whatsapp for $ 19 billion when the messaging app maker had just 55 workers. Two years ago, Facebook bought Instagram for $ 1 billion with simple 13 workers in his ranks.
This proves that internet technology has already created huge companies with a minimum number of personalities. But this is not the same as a person’s unicorn.
CuddlingUN QIUManaging Director of AI Research Laboratory Soakwho are building agents who are capable of pondering and coding, believe that the type of businesses of a person who will probably help AI will help hit the long time is the ones where the product is largely self -care.
“I think the places where they will be easier, and first, are ‘down’-whether consumer or prosumer-that do not require large go-to-market groups,” Qiu explained during the discussion. I think Go Market is actually one of the places where it will be difficult to automate all these relationships with other people. “
When it comes to making sales, it’s not always the best product to win. They are the people behind the product that have done a better job to build confidence with customers. So if you need to sell your product preventively, you may need to personalize.
“This trust by human-human, I think, is still very necessary and very important,” Qiu added.
Benjamin LeeuManaging Director of AI Drug Development Company Bio, is suspected of AI’s growing role in his company and beyond.
“I think we live in one of the most exciting areas to build companies,” Liu told Davos. “We have a doctoral intelligence in our pockets and we are starting to see AI systems doing the work of whole teams. I think in this world, Ai-native Companies have a fairly important advantage.”
However, Liu has repeated Qiu’s feelings: although the possibility of a person’s big-time businesses is real, it may not make sense from a business or business perspective-and everything ends up in the human condition that appreciates relationships.
“The ability to get there is earlier than people think,” Liu said. “My point is that it will take a long time because the businessman is a kind of lonely trip and want a co -founder. Companies are still starting with man. I think you will want some people to share the journey.”
So the reality is that we could really come up with a place where companies have always started: a founding team with complementary skills sets. But instead of escalating through increasing recruitment, they argue that the initial subtlety with the agents of AI who connect the void.
But even if the smell of a unicorn person never happens, there is no doubt that the upcoming AI truck will disturb the workforce in a great way.
“The AI’s Election”
If this still looks hypothetical, think again. Agentic AI already enters the workforce in the form of lawyers such as Harvey or software engineers like Devin of knowledge.
Sales agents AI They are also thrivingwith Supported by VC companies like Artisan who wants to replace the human workforce – As the advertisement of the dystopian plate proves in San Francisco.
Many other companies also lay the foundation for AGA AI.
Lattice, a HR platform and “People Management” which is lately assessed at $ 3 billion, proceeds further by giving “digital workers” Official filesWhich means that the AI agents of its customers are really appearing in the organizational diagram, filled with profile photography and manager assigned them.
Sarah Franklinwho joined Lattice as CEO last yearHe called this transition a “great new era of cooperation”, where people and agents of AI work side by side. And what this means is the management of these factors in a similar way to humans, to promote transparency and accountability.
“We want to prioritize people’s success as primary and when working with AI agents, it is important to understand what they have been assigned to do,” Franklin explained in Davos. “He does not say that AI is human. It is more that we must clearly determine where AI is. As AI speaks on behalf of trademarks and people, he makes decisions on behalf of trademarks and people and is incorporated with other systems, We have to be able to watch it. “
But if companies can operate on a scale without significant human workforce, what does this mean for society? People have to make money. They need purpose – could society not cause itself only if people are unable to work?
As with previous industrial revolutions, a Common performance around the AI revolution It is that new jobs will appear in the long run – we just don’t know what is yet.
“There will be great job creation,” Mitchell GreenFounder of the investment company Lead Edge Capital, he told Davos. “If you think about when the iPhone came out in 2007 – Uber and Airbnb are now $ 100 billion companies. [They] could not exist before that. Where opportunities can be the companies we don’t think yet – they will be these next giant businesses. ”
This does not mean that there will not be a whole pile of pain in the short term. And as we already see with the Chinese feeling Ai Deepseek, the rate of AI advance is important in terms of costs to render AI models. And this could be a key differentiateer against previous industrial and technological revolutions: we may not be able to adapt quickly.
“I think there are many discussions about re -education and upgrading,” Liu said. “But there is something unique enough about the pace of developments and how quickly these models improve, especially where we see these AI systems doing the work of whole teams.”
“AIS manager”
There has been a general consensus between the team that regardless of the rate of change, everyone will have to learn not only to live with AI, but also to learn how to use it to thrive in the workplace.
With you.com, for example, companies can access its API to bring in real -time web searching to any large language model (LLM). Although it offers its own agents suite for specific duties, companies can also create their own customized agentsBy choosing the preferred AI model and giving it instructions based on any sources of data they need to connect.
“We, as CEOS, will be the first generation to manage people and AI,” CEO You.com Richard Shock He said to Davos. “But I think the most interesting change here is in fact that every individual contributors, every employee, is going to become the director of AIS. And in that sense, everyone is going to become a kind of businessman.”
Thus, the jury is still too out of the way about whether we’ll ever see a true company of a Unicorn person. However, the beginning behind the emotion has already been a bit proved, as we have seen with the strange ratio of Whatsapp, who operated in $ 345 million for each employee at the time he bought Facebook.
Even Nvidia, with a maximum purchase of more than $ 3 trillion, has a relatively thin workforce of fewer than 30,000 workers – This is the equivalent of about $ 100 million in value per employee.
With the right type of company and the right execution, it is difficult to see how AI will not push these dollars north, as the worker is heading south. But it will most likely come to whether there is a desire for a person to build on his own, with enough business knowledge to incorporate a strong, defender business model that someone else can simply not reproduce in a hat.
But if society is ready to handle it, this is a completely different question.
