With their low entry barriers, high flexibility, and rapid startup potential, OPCs have become a low-cost entrepreneurial platform particularly suited to recent graduates, freelancers, and skilled professionals. Image generated by AI

The rapid deployment of next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) technologies—represented by general-purpose foundation models, domain-specific AI agents, and low-code/no-code development tools—is fundamentally reshaping the logic of entrepreneurship and lowering barriers to entry. This has given rise to a wave of lightweight entrepreneurship centered on one-person companies (OPCs).

Emerging force in innovative development

An OPC is a lightweight, legally established market entity owned by a single shareholder, with independent limited liability. It is a typical product of evolving production relations and the transformation of entrepreneurial models in the digital era. Compared with traditional enterprises, OPCs offer greater operational flexibility, lower trial-and-error costs, and faster decision-making. Compared with sole proprietorships, they offer limited liability protection and more standardized, market-oriented operations, making them an attractive vehicle for innovation and entrepreneurship.

The “DIY economy” presently emerging in China vividly captures the underlying logic of OPCs in the AI era. Individuals can leverage AI tools to rapidly turn creative ideas into products, services, and value, without relying on large teams or substantial capital investment.

Next-generation AI technologies are opening up new space for individual entrepreneurship. Unlike traditional models that depend on multiple forms of support—including teams, capital, and technology—these technologies make zero-code entrepreneurship, asset-light startups, and rapid iterative growth increasingly feasible. A single individual can take on end-to-end responsibility for R&D, operations, and marketing, giving rise to a proliferation of new entrepreneurial niches.

Local governments across China are actively responding to this trend, rolling out targeted policies and gradually fostering a more supportive environment for AI-driven entrepreneurship. For example, the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area has launched a model–data OPC community to provide industrial infrastructure for AI-oriented OPCs. Shanghai has established four “super entrepreneurship communities,” with one offering up to three years of rent-free workspace to ease early-stage pressures for startups. Shenzhen, for its part, is actively cultivating new business forms and models, aiming to build an AI-driven OPC ecosystem characterized by industrial clustering and dynamic innovation.

Next-generation AI technologies are also reshaping the OPC entrepreneurship paradigm. Centered on foundation models, AI agents, and automation tools, these technologies help overcome constraints on individual capabilities, time, and resources. In doing so, they enable a model in which solo founders take on end-to-end responsibility, supported by AI, to mature rapidly and generate a vast range of differentiated entrepreneurial opportunities.

At present, some 80%–90% of OPC founders use AI tools to generate code, design products, and manage operations, freeing themselves from routine tasks and allowing them to focus on higher-value activities such as refining ideas, identifying demand, and expanding markets. Individual productivity can thus increase by more than tenfold compared with traditional sole proprietorships, while trial-and-error costs decline significantly.

Early examples of AI-assisted OPCs achieving commercial success are already beginning to emerge. For instance, with the help of AI coding tools, an entrepreneur without programming experience developed a selfie lighting application in just one hour and achieved millions of downloads, appealing to segments such as young people living alone and image-conscious users. In another case, a three-person team used AI design and R&D tools to rapidly develop and launch a service application tailored to single-person households at a cost of roughly 1,000 yuan, tapping into the growing potential of the silver and solo economies.

Activating micro-level drivers of high-quality development

By 2025, more than 12 million individual entrepreneurs in China had adopted the OPC model, with newly registered OPCs increasing by 47% year-on-year, making them the most dynamic segment of the microeconomy. With their low entry barriers, high flexibility, and rapid startup potential, OPCs have become a low-cost entrepreneurial platform particularly suited to recent graduates, freelancers, and skilled professionals. Cultivating OPCs, therefore, is not merely about increasing the number of market entities. It constitutes a central task in innovation-driven development, industrial upgrading, and livelihood improvement, serving as a key lever for unlocking individual innovation potential and harnessing endogenous economic momentum.

Compared with large enterprises, OPCs benefit from shorter decision-making chains and greater agility, capable of identifying niche market demands with precision, focusing on fine-grained innovation in highly specialized areas, and effectively addressing blind spots in innovation left by larger firms. In 2024, independent R&D outputs by small and medium-sized enterprises accounted for 75.3% of valid invention patents in China, gradually shaping an innovation landscape in which large enterprises lead while smaller ones proliferate, providing sustained micro-level momentum for achieving greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology.

As specialized and lightweight market entities, OPCs also complement large, medium, and small enterprises to form a symbiotic industrial ecosystem, facilitating more refined and intelligent upgrading of supply chains. OPCs leverage their expertise to provide supporting technologies and customized services for large enterprises, helping to reduce costs and improve efficiency across supply chains. Surveys indicate that such supporting OPCs can reduce associated costs for core enterprises by an average of 15%. At the same time, the clustering of AI-enabled OPCs is giving rise to new business models such as intelligent services and flexible R&D, accelerating the integration of the real and digital economies. This, in turn, supports the digital transformation of traditional industries and offers diversified support for building modern industrial systems and advancing new quality productive forces.

Wu Xiaolong (associate professor) and Wu Ji (professor) are from the School of Business at Sun Yat-sen University.