A third of U.S. adults now say they plan to start a business or side hustle in 2026.
That's a 94% jump from last year's survey.
The finding comes from a new Intuit QuickBooks survey of more than 3,000 U.S. adults, part of a broader study covering Canada, the U.K. and Australia.
About two-thirds of aspiring American entrepreneurs say they're likely to use AI somewhere in the process of launching.
The Numbers Behind the Surge
Business startup intent rose 94% year over year in the U.S. survey.
The survey also points to financial pressure and economic uncertainty as part of the backdrop to the increase.
AI adoption among that group runs well ahead of the other three countries surveyed.
Thirty-one percent of aspiring U.S. founders say they're very likely to use AI, at least 5 percentage points higher than respondents in Canada, the U.K. or Australia.
Only 16% say they're unlikely to use AI tools at all.
What Aspiring Founders Actually Use AI For
The use cases skew toward the early, unglamorous parts of starting a business. Twenty-nine percent plan to use AI for brainstorming ideas or market research, 19% for building a website or product listings, and 14% for names, logos and branding.
Those are exactly the tasks people cite as their biggest obstacles. Twenty-four percent say lack of time is the main thing holding them back, and 22% point to lack of business acumen.
In practice, AI is helping aspiring founders compensate for two things they say they lack most: time and business expertise.
That reframing matters for how the survey's overall numbers should be read. A 94% jump in startup intent doesn't necessarily mean 94% more viable businesses are forming.
It may partly reflect how much easier AI has made the visible early steps of starting one, a logo, a landing page, a rough business plan, even if the harder parts of actually building and running a business haven't gotten any easier.
Millennials Are Leading, Not Gen Z
The generational breakdown cuts against the usual assumption that younger generations lead on AI adoption. Seventy-five percent of millennials say they'll use AI in some capacity when launching a business, and 40% say they're very likely to.
Gen Z came in at 59%, and Gen X at 61%, both well behind millennials on overall likelihood.
The numbers are interesting because millennials are leading despite the assumption that younger generations would be the most enthusiastic AI adopters. The survey doesn't establish why, but the gap is substantial enough to be worth watching.
Gen Z grew up with these tools, but millennials have had more years of professional experience with the tasks AI can now compress, research, writing, marketing, administration and basic product development.
What This Means for Miami
This national data lines up with a pattern MAIN has already seen locally: AI is making it easier for people who aren't traditional founders to start something of their own.
The Bay Area layoffs story covered a UX designer building an AI-powered agency after losing his corporate job. That's the kind of transition this survey suggests could become much more common: people who might once have needed a co-founder, freelancer or small team can now use AI to get a business from idea to first version largely on their own.
That's particularly relevant in Miami, where a large entrepreneurial ecosystem already exists around those early stages. Refresh Miami provides community and founder networks, while investors such as Fuel Venture Capital and Boldstart operate further up the funding ladder.
The interesting question is what happens before founders reach that ladder.
If AI makes it cheaper and faster to produce a prototype, website, market research and initial branding, more people can arrive at the point where they have something real to show before they've raised a dollar.
That doesn't mean Miami is about to get thousands of new venture-backed startups. Most of these businesses will probably remain small, fail, or never progress beyond the side-hustle stage.
But it does mean the cost of getting to the starting line is falling, and that could produce a much larger pool of people trying.