A gender gap is emerging at the frontier of AI-enabled entrepreneurship

AI is making it cheaper and faster to start a business according to Gusto’s 2026 New Business Formation Survey, but gender gaps are emerging. Male entrepreneurs are more likely than women to use AI to launch new businesses, and are also more likely to use AI in regular business operations. 

With over 5 million new businesses launched last year, we find that about 174,000 new businesses in 2025 that very likely would not have existed without AI. Reliance on AI to start a business is different between men and women, but both men and women experience benefits of using AI.

Key findings

• Nearly ⅔ of men used AI to launch their business last year compared to just over half of women. Previous research has shown that women not using AI to launch their business are likely forcing themselves to be less productive and have lower revenues.

• Men were twice as likely as women to say that their business would not have started or would have started at a smaller scale without AI. However, women benefit when they do use AI. Among women who used AI, 54% said using the technology made it easier and cheaper to start the business compared to 47% of men.

• Gen Z men were 7 times more likely than Gen Z women to require AI to start their business. Gen Z women represented the largest group to benefit from AI adoption in their small business.

• Men are almost 25% more likely to regularly use AI in their new business than women. Even after starting a business, the gender gap persists and women do not incorporate AI into their business.

Nearly ⅔ of men used AI to start their business in 2025 compared to just over half of women

Starting a business is difficult, and requires many tasks of the business owner beyond being an expert at their craft. In 2025, small business founders were likely to use AI to accelerate many of these tasks. However, there were clear differences in the prevalence of using the technology between men and women.

Sixty-four percent of men, and 56% of women, used AI to start their business in 2025. Small business owners who adopt AI see business results. Eighty percent of small businesses using AI have reported productivity increases of 20%, and 40% have reported revenue growth of 20%, suggesting that by not adopting this technology women missed out on revenue and productivity gains.

Men were nearly twice as likely to be highly dependent on AI when starting their business in 2025 than women

Men were nearly twice as likely as women to say that AI was necessary in launching their business, with 11% being highly dependent compared to only 6% of women. This holds across sectors, with men more likely to cite AI dependency in Professional Services and Goods-Producing industries, and women slightly more so in Community Services.

While men were more likely to be highly dependent on using AI to start their business, women who used AI were more likely to say that they would have started their business without AI but using the technology made starting their business faster and easier. Taken together, this suggests that AI lowered the barrier to entry for men who might not otherwise start a business, while serving as an efficiency tool for the women who did use it. As more women adopt AI in their business launches and daily operations, they will likely see more cost and efficiency gains.

Gen Z men were 7 times more likely to be highly dependent on AI to start their business than Gen Z women

The gender gap in AI-enabled entrepreneurship is present in all generations. Counterintuitively, this gap is largest among Gen Z entrepreneurs. Gen Z men were 7 times more likely than Gen Z women to say that their business would not have started or would have started in a much more limited form without access to AI tools. Women who use AI when launching their business benefit, and as the gap between Gen Z men and women narrows we expect to see even more Gen Z entrepreneurship.

Men were nearly 25% more likely than women to use AI in regular business operations

Not only did AI facilitate more men starting a business in 2025, but men were 23% more likely than women to say that they use AI in regular operations. This represents an opportunity for women entrepreneurs to increase their productivity and decrease costs, because women who used AI to start their business were much more likely to say they received efficiency and cost benefits.

Conclusion

AI is unlocking new business opportunities, and perhaps more importantly, making it easier, cheaper and faster to start a new business. But adoption has been uneven, and men outpace women on nearly every dimension in the use of AI when starting and operating new businesses.