As AI Disrupts the Workforce, These Small Businesses Are Still Safe to Start in 2026

Artificial intelligence is displacing workers at a rising rate, but that is also giving rise to another trend. More and more entrepreneurs are starting their own businesses after having been laid off. In 2024, 67% more entrepreneurs launched a venture after layoffs, and that number could keep growing as AI becomes even more entrenched.

As someone who has experienced job loss in my career, whether from radio reporter work back in the early 2000s or startup marketing positions later on, I know that the path forward doesn’t always have to mean starting another job search. I, like thousands of other professionals, decided it was time to strike out on my own and turn displacement into my own business. You can do it too, and here are business models that offer low startup costs with proven demand.

1. Digital services

Companies implementing AI are not doing it instantly. It’s often a phased implementation with much work still needing to be done by humans. Digital services can be performed by contract instead of W2 employees.

Digital services is a broad umbrella that covers many different types of work. It ranges from digital products like e-books and online courses to specialized services such as content moderation. That’s where people review user-generated content for platforms to make sure it meets community standards, This requires human judgment about nuance and context, which AI is currently still struggling with.

Custom workflow automation is another example. It helps small businesses connect their software tools to work together more efficiently. Services for niche markets like healthcare compliance consulting for digital platforms are also an area where human expertise in navigating complex regulations is essential. Providing customer-focused service and exceptional support can act as a differentiator and allow you to thrive in a competitive market.

2. Coaching

This category is not necessarily digital in nature, but is vitally necessary when massive job displacements occur. Many laid off workers feel adrift enough when laid off, but that feeling can be amplified when it seems like the industry they’ve spent time building experience in no longer has a place for them.

Coaching displaced workers into new career paths can be both profitable and fulfilling. After years of journalism work in 2009, I started my own coaching business teaching people how to use growing social media platforms like Facebook. People I taught ended up working with publications to help them use those channels to increase page views to their sites. These days, teaching people how to navigate career shifts or develop new capabilities has immediate market demand and provides a noble service to the employee.

Coaching can run the gamut from career coaching (who better to help laid-off workers into a new career than someone who has done it successfully) to coaching for both digital and non-digital skills like coding, sales, or public speaking. One of the biggest advantages coaches have over AI-generated advice is providing personal accountability and emotional support. Those elements keep this business more of a human domain, even as automation becomes more popular.

3. Virtual assistant

If you are an individual with strong organizational skills and have the ability to multitask, being a virtual assistant could be an excellent career. Excellent virtual assistants have a multitude of skills, both technical and non-technical, but what ties them all together is the reliability of the individual who can keep things organized and solve problems quickly. The main service virtual assistants provide to their clients is to allow the client to focus on their core goals while handling important day-to-day functions.

The virtual assistant is a jack-of-many-trades and master of all of them. Administrative tasks are typically the first things that are thought of. Appointment scheduling, calendar management, responding to emails, booking travel and document prep are all tools in the arsenal of a good assistant.

But assistants can also be called on to perform more digital functions such as social media management, marketing functions like newsletter creation, website updates and social media curation. Market research functions and basic bookkeeping duties could also be included.

4. Micro level and mid-size AI implementation

When we think of AI, what first comes to mind are juggernauts like ChatGPT and Claude. And while OpenAI and Anthropic form some of the main pillars (along with Nvidia) of the AI market, there are smaller players focusing on more specific implementations, some small enough to run on a single machine, provided it has the number-crunching power.

These companies offer entrepreneurs AI power, but at a smaller scale. They also offer the ability to tailor the data the AI uses to the needs of the business at a very low cost. Knowing how to install, configure, deploy and administrate systems like these can make a person almost indispensable to a small business wanting to harness AI’s power.

Having the skills to leverage mid-size AI services, like Salesforce’s Einstein or Adobe Firefly for example, can also make you a valuable asset to a company that uses those platforms, but doesn’t have the AI experience actually on their staff. You not only bring value to the table but also allow the business to get the most value out of the expensive platforms they are paying for.

5. Other AI-specific services

While much has been said about the skills AI will be replacing, there are also skill sets that will be opening up as a result of AI being a still-new and largely unregulated technology. Two of these services are a prompt engineer and an AI ethicist.

Prompt engineering sounds simple at first glance, but AI, being a computer, is still a garbage-in, garbage-out system. If your prompt is poorly written, you won’t get the desired result from your AI system, no matter how powerful it is. Prompt engineering involves designing AI requests to achieve results quickly. Not only are strong language skills required, but also a conceptual knowledge of how an AI system thinks.

AI ethicists offer a vital service to any company wanting to deploy AI, especially if that AI is to be client-facing. AI ethicists ensure that artificial intelligence is both developed and deployed in a responsible and ethical manner. They often partner with legal professionals to ensure that data is acquired ethically and used responsibly. They create the ethics guidelines that employees follow and mitigate risks like privacy and copyright violations.

AI ethics operates at the intersection of corporate policy, transparency, accountability and the law. Many reputable institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT offer AI ethics education and certifications to meet this new and growing need.

New technology can lead to a new career

Job displacements due to technology have been occurring since the automobile made buggy whips obsolete. But as a result, new opportunities opened up and sometimes entire new markets were created.

Each of these career options offers relatively low barriers to entry, could have significant demand in the coming months and has the potential to scale without the need for significant investment.

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