A laptop, a water cup and a canvas bag—that's all that sits on Su Kui's desk. The entrepreneur, born in the 1980s, runs his entire operation solo, a one-person company (OPC) based on AI-assisted animation tools. From this minimalist setup, he has nurtured a product, Dragon Bone Animation, with over 6,000 registered users worldwide.

Every morning at 10, he arrives at his workstation in Zhongguancun AI North Latitude, a Beijing community offering low-cost office space and support for OPCs in the city's tech hub. He starts by reviewing user submissions and feedback on his product, then spends at least six hours coding and debugging with the help of AI tools like Tencent's Cloud Studio and Doubao.

"All AIs are my employees," he told Beijing Daily. "They never complain, never get tired—as long as the instructions are clear, they deliver."

Solo act

Until 2023, Su had spent years as a senior engineer and technical expert at well-known tech companies. Then a wave of AI tools—ChatGPT, DeepSeek and others—stopped him cold. He wondered, with AI by his side, whether one person could do the work that once took a team?

In 2024, he launched his product, using AI to write code, check for bugs, generate animations, and even draft promotional copy.

When he first heard the term OPC in November 2025, he realized he already fit the description perfectly—and that he met the requirements for Zhongguancun AI North Latitude. So he moved in.

By then, across China—from Shanghai's Lingang New Area to Bao'an District in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province—OPCs were quietly emerging as a new entrepreneurial paradigm. Leveraging low costs, fast decisions and flexible responses, they thrive in niche sectors. Driven by advancing AI and supportive policies, these "super individuals" are redefining what small-scale innovation can achieve.

To support their growth, cities have rolled out targeted policies. Shenzhen, the first to launch a municipal action plan for OPCs, offers up to 10 million yuan ($1.4 million) in training coupons for each applicant each year to offset computing and model-calling costs.

Suzhou in Jiangsu Province has elevated OPC development to a citywide strategy and has set up a 1-billion-yuan ($144 million) Youth Innovation Fund, providing up to 20 million yuan ($2.8 million) in policy-based equity investment for a high-quality project. In Beijing, the community where Su settled offers rent reductions for up to three years and computing power subsidies—creating a supportive ecosystem for tech-focused OPCs. That community now brings together more than 120 AI innovation enterprises. Among them, 26 are OPC-scale businesses (teams of one to four people), and 14 are pure one-person companies, covering fields such as AI + industry, AI + culture and AI + finance.

For Su, joining Zhongguancun AI North Latitude means more than getting just office space. He ran into old classmates from university, former colleagues and even potential sales partners. Before, working from home alone, his mindset was unsteady—he kept doubting whether he was on the right path. Now, gathering and talking regularly with other entrepreneurs has given him greater confidence.

Su is hardly alone. Beyond tech entrepreneurship, OPCs have taken root in fields as varied as cross-border e-commerce and cultural creative industries.

In Shanghai's Lingang New Area, Chen Zishun, founder of Humi Technology, settled into a community called Zero Boundary Cube—a space that provides free office space and accommodation. Within four months, he successfully sold a type of blanket to the Japanese market. "In the fourth quarter of 2025, the company's sales reached over 5 million yuan ($720,000)," Chen told Shanghai Daily.

Launched in August 2025, the community had attracted more than 150 OPCs and small teams in just five months, thanks to its support for cross-border data compliance and resource matching.

"I set up this OPC in 2025, and it only took me three days to complete the registration," Chen said. "The government provides free office space and policy support. Starting a business alone is much easier than I thought."

The rise of these ventures points to a deeper shift in how work gets done. Zhang Zhenpeng, a professor at Shenzhen University's Institute for Cultural Industries, sees OPCs as a fundamentally new kind of organization.

"An OPC is essentially a lean, highly efficient structure that pairs skilled solo entrepreneurs with AI tools," he told Guangming Daily. "It breaks free from the constraints of traditional employment relationships on individual value."

He added that the very metrics of corporate growth are shifting. In the past, investors viewed increased hiring as a sign of company expansion. Now, the competition, he said, is over who can coordinate complex business tasks more efficiently.

From solo to squad

Ran Wei, who used to work as a medical device salesman in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, quit his job last September and started building his own platform with AI—a service website for OPC entrepreneurs offering policy consultations, product sales and help in finding partners.

From the first line of code for the product to the final version ready for launch, it took Ran just 48 hours. He now works out of the Future Digital Intelligence Hub in Hangzhou, sharing space with other OPC founders.

"Usually, we're independent, each working on our own projects," Ran told Zhejiang Daily. "But when a big order comes that one person can't handle alone, we can quickly form a team. One person handles the AI marketing, another excels at user interface design, someone else specializes in hardware development. When the project ends, we disband just as fast. It's a new kind of organization for the AI era—collaboration not driven by company structure, but forming naturally around the work itself."

For all the promise, Ran acknowledges that OPCs still face significant hurdles—funding, trust and capability among them. Tang Ningyu, a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Antai College of Economics and Management, has observed these challenges firsthand.

"Traditional bank lending heavily relies on fixed asset collateral, but OPC's core assets are concentrated in intangible assets such as intellectual property, future revenue rights and personal credit—which are difficult to value and pledge," she told Shanghai Youth Daily.

Gu Minghua, Chairman of Suzhou Dahua Group, pointed to other structural weaknesses. "Relying solely on individual decision-making and operations, OPCs have inherent limitations in strategic judgment, professional expertise, managerial capacity and market competitiveness," he told Xinhua News Agency.

But Jiang Xuefeng, a professor at East China Normal University, struck a more optimistic note. Today's hi-tech innovative companies, he argued, are defined by high value and high integration—a synthesis of thinking patterns, business models and technological approaches. Unlike traditional manufacturing with its vast factories, a small number of people can now create top-tier companies.

"The rise of OPCs is a promising new industrial form," Jiang added. "We should recognize the new business model, and opportunities for technological breakthroughs and industrial upgrades that it brings. The task now is to shift from old models to new ones."

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

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