So, you want to be a solopreneur. AI helps but here’s what you need to know
Agentic AI can make it easier to start a business and offers a new career pathway.
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Participants lining up near a lobster-shaped balloon to install OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent, outside the Baidu offices in Beijing earlier this year.
PHOTO: REUTERS
It seems almost too good to be true: entire companies with healthy revenue streams and all of one headcount who is the CEO, finance, marketing and procurement departments combined, plus the intern thrown in too. Such one-person companies, also known as solopreneurs, seem to have emerged with a ferocity in the age of agentic AI.
This trend is rising in China, which saw the “raising a lobster” craze early in 2026 when people rushed to install the open-source agentic AI platform OpenClaw for automating tasks such as drafting reports, organising e-mails and booking flights. Leveraging such artificial intelligence tools, young people in China are increasingly launching AI-powered “one-person companies” (OPCs) as the technology can now handle many business functions, making it far easier for individuals to operate alone.