How Small Business Owners Are Using AI to Help Propel Growth

When Marie Hunter and her colleagues hit on a new idea earlier this year for her fuel distribution firm, she used an artificial intelligence (AI) agent to crunch the numbers.

She wanted to add solar panels to the tanks to help power their pumps and make other modifications. Rather than analyzing the cost of customizing a few fuel storage tanks for select customers, the agent delivered an ambitious blueprint for a new business.

“It came back with a plan to upsell a new product line of tanks with additional services,” says Hunter, the owner and president of KRG Oil Company, a small family firm outside Atlanta. The agent “is my force multiplier,” says Hunter.

She jokingly named the agent Billi Jean, her take on the name of one of her favorite songs. Hunter developed the agent with a colleague and originally used it to help manage emails. It also analyzes finances and prepares strategic growth plans in line with Hunter’s vision for the company.

In the last two years, small business owners such as Hunter are increasingly using AI to help shape the fortunes of their enterprises, according to a report released this month by Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, an education and support program that has helped thousands of enterprises grow and create jobs. Hunter and the other 10,000 Small Businesses alumni interviewed in this article have been independently exploring and integrating AI into their companies.

In a survey of graduates of the program, 42% of respondents say they use AI for financial analysis and business planning, which is more than double the rate in 2024. And more than half of respondents say they use the innovation to develop or research new projects and products, according to the report, The AI Economy is a Small Business Economy.

How are small businesses using AI?

Small business owners are rapidly putting AI to work. More than 85% of survey respondents say they use AI in some form. Accounting for 43.5% of US economic output, small businesses are responsible for 61% of net new job creation, according to the US Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy. Small businesses are poised to play a significant role in the dissemination of AI.

Asahi Pompey, global head of the Office of Corporate Engagement and chair of the Urban Investment Group, says the new Goldman Sachs Small Business AI Institute is designed to support small business owners as they navigate changes brought about by AI. The Institute will help guide entrepreneurs through AI adoption and integration, positioning them to push their businesses into this new frontier.

“It is clear that AI is already changing how small business owners are making decisions, serving customers, and planning for growth,” she says. “The challenge is no longer whether small businesses will adopt AI. It is how they harness it fully and turn experimentation into lasting results.”

Interviews with graduates of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses show just how dynamic their AI applications are, and how strategically they have designed and deployed their own AI agents.

The business owners are using AI to manage customer service at campgrounds, assist control rooms in petrochemical plants, and help design Spanish language lessons for online education. These businesses all share a common goal: using AI to get the most out of their businesses.

Using AI on the shop floor

Automation is nothing new for Bob McClure, the co-owner of McClure’s Pickles in Detroit. As the producer of more than 3 million jars of pickled cucumbers, onions, and peppers annually, the firm has long used industrial robots to label, pack, and stack its inventory. What is new is applying AI to the company’s critical functions, says McClure.

Take food safety. Nothing is more important in his business, McClure says. The company constantly runs tests of its reporting system in the event of a food recall. In the past, employees manually entered information on the origins of the raw ingredients used to make pickles in a database, and it took 30 to 45 minutes to run a trace.

After McClure integrated professional versions of large language models (LLMs) into the firm’s enterprise resource management program, the system could show the journey the ingredients took from their source to the jar in less than two minutes. It provides an online dashboard to show where the pickles were shipped, how much of the batch is left in the warehouse, and even its pH or acidity levels.

McClure also used AI to create a maintenance application to automatically monitor production equipment, an accounting app to draft accounts payable for suppliers, and another app to review jar labels for accuracy.

Integrating LLMs into business systems has its challenges

There are challenges. Writing instructions for the LLMs takes finesse and sometimes a few “iterations” are needed to get it right. And sometimes there are bugs to work out. Because McClure, a former actor with no code training, can use natural language to engage the models, he says he does not need to license software or pay a technician. He can do it himself.

Even better, he says he can apply the AI models to multiple tasks without paying more for their services. “I think AI is uniquely suited to small business entrepreneurship because you are so strapped for resources in terms of time, people, and money,” McClure says. “I now need to hire humans to manage my AI.”

Naomi Stone, the owner and CEO of an environmental engineering consulting firm in Hermosa Beach, California, has gone a step further. She has made an AI application the cornerstone of a new venture, a company called Enso.

Can AI connect producers and consumers?

Companies already pay to dispose of their surplus materials, and Stone says Enso is designed to turn that expense into a new revenue stream. The firm uses AI to match companies holding surplus materials and industrial byproducts with buyers who can put them to work. Some byproducts, like coal ash, have long been used to strengthen building materials. Other byproducts, from packaging to equipment to manufacturing scrap, simply need the right buyer, she says.

For Stone, putting waste materials back to work advances the circular economy, a key tenet in sustainable finance. AI can facilitate matches between coal ash producers and buyers at a speed and scale Enso would have a hard time doing on its own.

“It makes matches we haven’t even thought of,” says Stone. “And the best part is it can help our clients convert waste from a cost into a new revenue stream.”

AI’s potential to illuminate unforeseen opportunities is a theme that comes up regularly among small business owners. Back in Roswell, Georgia, Marie Hunter says she has considered focusing more on her coaching business for entrepreneurs. So she gave her AI agent new instructions: to compile M&A data and prepare KRG Oil for an exit. “What does that look like, and what do I need to think about?” Hunter says. She adds that she’s ready to aspire to get her company to “the multiple it deserves.”

 Survey data is based on responses from 2,473 Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses alumni who participated in the 2026 Alumni Survey, conducted by Babson College from August 10–24, 2026. The survey was sent to 14,967 program alumni.

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