How businesses are navigating the promise and peril of AI
A new SoFi survey reveals that the AI revolution isn’t just coming — it’s already here. In SoFi’s Spring 2026 survey of more than 500 small business owners across the U.S., three-quarters of respondents reported that they’ve already adopted at least one AI tool.
It’s not simply a matter of following trends: 95% of the adopters (and 78% overall) consider artificial intelligence to be at least moderately important to their business success. Interestingly, male business owners are much more likely than female entrepreneurs to rely strongly on AI (63% versus 43%).
But enthusiasm doesn’t necessarily mean mastery. Only 41% of adopters consider themselves highly proficient; an additional 55% say they understand the basics. Survey results show that the more heavily a business depends on AI, the more likely the owner is to be an expert.
Key Points
- Three-quarters of small business owners have adopted AI tools, and 95% of those users consider AI moderately to extremely important for business success.
- Data analysis is the most common AI application, used by 51% of small businesses; in contrast, AI is used for sales and lead generation by just 18%, possibly due to AI’s limitations in relationship building.
- Looking ahead, more than two-thirds of small business owners (70%) believe AI will be very or extremely important to their companies’ success over the next few years.
- Security concerns top the list of worries, with 36% of business owners citing data breaches and leaks as their biggest AI-related fear, followed by steep learning curves.
- As AI increases productivity, workforce projections are mixed; almost half (47%) anticipate they’ll keep their current headcount, while about one-third (32%) expect to reduce staff.
Most Small Business Owners Say AI Is A-OK
Small business owners — those with 500 employees or fewer — are relying on AI to help their businesses not only succeed but also compete with larger firms. More than half (56%) call AI “very” or “extremely” important to their current success. And more than 4 in 5 respondents (81%) say using AI is “essential” or “helpful” for their small business to stay competitive.
Still, despite the general rush toward AI use, roughly 9% say their businesses don’t rely on AI now and that they don’t need to use it to compete against larger firms. More than twice as many women as men (14% versus 6%) feel this way.
The discrepancy may be due to differences between the types of businesses women and men run. Women frequently own businesses in sectors like hospitality, retail, health care, and personal services, which tend to be hands-on. Male-owned businesses have long dominated industries like construction, transportation, warehouse, and tech/software.
Managing the Machines: How Business Owners Use AI
The two categories of AI — generative and agentic — can support a wide variety of business functions. Generative AI typically relies on human prompting. It’s used for writing, content creation, and the crafting of images, video, and audio. It can also play a part in coding and software development. Agentic AI (aka AI agents) is the term for systems intended to perform multi-step actions without regular prompting. AI agents can improve productivity and automated processes while supporting specialized business tools.
AI can quickly analyze huge, complex datasets and assess risk. And indeed, a large majority (66%) of regular AI users in the survey apply it to data analysis or financial reporting.
AI can also facilitate less quantitative jobs. More than 60% of regular AI users — and nearly half of all respondents — deploy it for customer service, administrative, and/or marketing tasks. (Customer service-related AI functions might include chatbots or automated email. Administrative uses could involve scheduling meetings or summarizing notes.)
One area where the new technology has yet to find a strong foothold is in sales and lead generation. Fewer than 1 in 5 (18%) respondents use AI tools for this function. Even among regular users, fewer than one-quarter (23%) apply AI to sales.
This lag in AI adoption may relate to the nature of sales, which relies on personal relationships, trust, and good-faith negotiation. It could be that current AI tools aren’t well suited to such nuanced work.
Facing the AI Future
For all the AI hype, the success or failure of any technology depends on how humans use it. The small business owners who responded to the SoFi survey tend to be bullish overall. More than two-thirds (69%) of them say AI will be “very” or “extremely” important to their companies’ success in the next few years. The share of those who call AI unimportant at present (13%) drops by more than one-third (to 8%) when respondents look ahead a few years.
Delivering Productivity
Respondents also expect to see increased productivity. Almost 9 in 10 (86%) respondents anticipate some rise in productivity; more than two-thirds (68%) think that the increase will be “moderate” or “significant.”
- Significant increase (36%)
- Moderate increase (32%)
- Slight increase (18%)
Is Downsizing Unavoidable?
Many business analysts and economists foretell job losses as AI systems replace human employees. The survey data bears that out, but the effect is muted. Almost half of all respondents (45%) expect that their head count will not change during the next five years. But almost one-third (32%) think they’ll need fewer employees.
Broadly speaking, the more importance people think AI will have for their business success in the next few years, the more likely they are to anticipate a reduction in staff.
Causality is impossible to pin down, but a rationale for these findings is easy to imagine. For example, business owners who expect AI to be very important to their future success may spend a great deal of money and time on AI systems. Owners may then cut payroll to cover the expense.
By the same principle, owners who expect the technology to matter less to their success may not bother implementing AI systems that are advanced enough to supplant human employees.
Reasons for Optimism and Pessimism
Small business owners are excited about AI’s potential for greater efficiency, but worry about cybersecurity issues and the time-consuming effort of learning the tools. As suggested above, job loss isn’t among the top concerns. Only 11% of all respondents say the replacement of human jobs is their biggest AI worry.
Overall, 9% of all respondents said they were “not optimistic about AI,” while 11% said they have “no concerns.”
According to survey data, the top two reasons for optimism and pessimism are:
- AI will increase efficiency and automate repetitive tasks (37%).
- AI will improve marketing and customer outreach (24%).
- Implementing AI could lead to data privacy and security risks (36%).
- Learning AI tools will be complex and time-consuming (15%).
Promise and Potential
Eighty-one percent of all respondents say using AI is helpful or essential in keeping up with larger competitors. But competitiveness is rarely the top reason for optimism. Instead, AI’s ability to increase efficiency is the big draw.
Here’s what small business owners are looking forward to most:
- Increasing efficiency and automating repetitive tasks (37%)
- Improving marketing and customer outreach (24%)
- Gaining new insights from our business data (13%)
- Enhancing customer service (e.g., chatbots) (10%)
- Keeping up with larger competitors (8%)
Worst Worries
Among respondents, the biggest cause for concern is the possibility of security breaches and data leaks (36%). The second-place choice — a steep learning curve for AI tools — gets fewer than half as many votes (15%).
Here are the top sources of anxiety, according to survey data:
- Data privacy and security risks (36%)
- The time and complexity of learning the AI tools (15%)
- The risk of errors or “hallucinations” from AI (14%)
- The cost of implementation and software (13%)
- Fear of AI replacing human jobs (11%)
Gender appears to affect how business owners identify and assess risk. For example, 14% of women are most concerned about AI replacing human jobs, while only 9% of men are. On the flip side, 16% of men are concerned about the cost of implementation and software, versus 9% of women.
Need vs Know-How
Small business owners’ willingness to adopt AI doesn’t necessarily translate into expertise. Even as 75% of all respondents report using AI technology regularly, only half (52%) rate themselves as competent, and about one-third (33%) say they are highly proficient.
At the same time, the more important AI is to a business, the more likely its owner is to be highly proficient.
- Among the 154 owners (30% of all respondents) who consider AI “extremely” important to their businesses’ success, 62% are highly proficient.
- Within the subset of 136 business owners (26% of all respondents) who say AI is “very” important, 43% say they’re highly proficient with AI tools.
- The remaining 228 owners (44% of all respondents) label AI “moderately,” “slightly,” or “not at all” important; of that group, only 10% rate themselves as highly proficient.
The connection is clear, but the direction isn’t. Some owners may have developed proficiency because their business required it, while others who were already proficient may have started or converted a business with AI tools.
The survey also showed that employees’ proficiency with AI tools tends to track the owner’s level of proficiency.
Of course, not every company can or should rely on AI. Businesses like massage therapy, house cleaning, or pet care can succeed regardless of the owners’ or workers’ AI proficiency.
Everybody Hurts: Implementation Can Be Tough on Experts Too
Regardless of how familiar they are with AI, large minorities report significant hurdles in putting the tools into action. More than one-third (35%) of people at all proficiency levels have faced challenges in implementation.
Among owners who use AI tools in regular operations, more than 4 in 10 (42%) say they have stumbled somewhat with implementation.
Even for owners who know their way around AI tools, setup and implementation aren’t always smooth. More than one-third (35%) of highly proficient people faced challenges, as did almost 2 in 5 (39%) competent ones.
The fact that these percentages are so similar is noteworthy. This may reflect committed business owners adopting multiple tools or more complex systems. Also, as people gain competence, they may choose increasingly difficult or far-reaching applications.
A few respondents don’t use AI yet report implementation challenges. Perhaps those challenges explain why these owners avoid AI tools.
Toughest Challenges
Almost two-thirds of respondents (65%), regardless of AI use or proficiency level, said implementation did not cause them any problems.
Where people do cite challenges, the most common one (with 11% share of all respondents) is the time and effort needed to learn and manage AI tools. Among regular AI users, 34% of women and 31% of men call this their biggest obstacle.
These challenges each vex 6% of respondents:
- Required training for staff
- Cost of tools and implementation
- Complexity of finding the right tools
Few (4%) said that AI’s risks — including potential problems with privacy and accuracy — represent its biggest challenge for them.
Demographics and Divergences
Gender Differences
Men are much more likely than women to strongly rely on AI (35% versus 20%). Among women, there’s an almost equal split between those who find AI extremely important for their business success (20%) and those who say it doesn’t matter (21%). Men’s disagreement is much more lopsided, with 35% calling AI extremely important and 9% saying it’s not important at all.
Generational Leanings
The younger the business owner, the more likely they are to rely on AI in their enterprise. In fact, business owners under 55 are more than six times as likely as their elders to consider AI very or extremely important (49% versus 8%).
The Takeaway
A solid three-quarters of small business owners have already jumped in and adopted AI tools, most believing AI is “moderately” to “extremely” important for their success. A massive 81% see AI as essential or helpful for staying competitive, but 36% of that same group admit they’re quite uneasy about threats to data privacy and security.
Looking ahead, more than two-thirds are convinced AI will be critical to their company’s future. The survey also uncovered significant age and gender gaps, with men much more likely than women to embrace the new technology.
This story was produced by SoFi and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
