33% of US Adults Plan a Business in 2026; 65% Will Use AI

For venture investors, accelerators, and platform builders, the real signal is not just the 33% who plan to start a business but the 65% who plan to do it with AI. That means the 2026 founder cohort will arrive more capable of building a first product or storefront, but also more dependent on AI tools for the work investors used to treat as founder signal—making it harder to separate genuine insight from generated output. Startup service providers and early-stage capital may need to adjust diligence, onboarding, and support for a founder base that is side-hustle-first and AI-native.

According to a survey commissioned by Intuit QuickBooks and published August 20, 2026, one in three U.S. adults—33%—plan to start a new business or side hustle in 2026, a 94% jump from the prior year. Among that aspiring-founder population, 65% say they are likely to use AI to help launch their ventures, with 31% saying they are very likely. The survey, based on more than 3,000 U.S. adults and 1,500 respondents each in Canada, the U.K., and Australia, points to a rapidly reconfiguring entrepreneurship pipeline in which AI is not a niche productivity add-on but an expected launch tool. These are survey-reported intentions and should be read as directional, but the scale of the shift is large enough to matter for tool builders, investors, lenders, and policymakers.

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AI use cases cited by aspiring founders include brainstorming business ideas or conducting market research (29%), creating websites or product listings (19%), and developing names, logos, and branding assets (14%).

The 94% increase in entrepreneurial intent is the more striking backdrop. It suggests that the post-2020 side-hustle economy has hardened into a durable aspiration: people are not only supplementing income but increasingly viewing business ownership as their primary path to financial stability and wealth. At the same time, the survey identifies blockers: 24% cite lack of time as the biggest barrier, and 22% cite lack of business acumen. This is precisely the gap AI is perceived to fill. AI use cases cited by aspiring founders include brainstorming business ideas or conducting market research (29%), creating websites or product listings (19%), and developing names, logos, and branding assets (14%). These are early-stage, high-friction tasks that previously required either specialized skills, paid contractors, or significant time.

The United States is the most aggressive on AI-assisted founding among the four countries surveyed. The 31% who say they are very likely to use AI is at least 5 percentage points higher than in Canada, the U.K., and Australia; only 16% of U.S. aspiring founders say they are unlikely to use any AI tools. That differential may reflect a mix of American tech optimism, a deeper consumer AI tool ecosystem, and heavier marketing penetration by U.S.-based AI platforms. It also means the U.S. founder pipeline is becoming an AI-native cohort: for this group, the default questions are not whether to use AI, but which models and tools to use for which launch tasks.

Notably, the survey distinguishes an informal entrepreneurship economy powered by side hustles. Many of these founders are likely starting lean, perhaps without formal incorporation, traditional bank loans, or venture capital. AI's ability to compress the time from idea to first revenue is especially important for this segment. A founder with a full-time job can use AI to generate a product listing or a simple brand in an afternoon, rather than waiting until they can afford a freelancer. This has implications for how to measure entrepreneurship: official small-business formation data may undercount side-hustle activity, while AI tool engagement and payment platform activity may become better leading indicators.