Can a single lobster support the "entrepreneurial dreams" of millions of people?

During the Spring Festival, Fu Sheng, the CEO of Cheetah Mobile, was recuperating in bed due to a skiing fracture. However, he didn't idle away. Instead, he used OpenClaw to build an automated team consisting of 8 Agents to write official accounts, make short - videos, and offer New Year greetings on his behalf.

Without writing a single line of code or opening any folders on the computer, he completed the work that originally required a whole team just by giving orders to the AI "workers".

This immersive experience of "raising lobsters" not only made OpenClaw the most popular AI tool at the beginning of the year but also brought the long - existing concept of "One - Person Company" (OPC) into the public eye. With the support of artificial intelligence technology, more and more super individuals are exploring the possibilities of one - person companies.

The latest report from McKinsey points out that AI is triggering the third organizational paradigm shift after the industrial revolution and the digital revolution. The collaborative model of "humans + AI agents" will become the core form of future business.

This change is not groundless. The "2025 China Digital Economy Entrepreneurship White Paper" shows that more than 12 million individual entrepreneurs across the country have chosen the OPC model. Globally, one - person companies are also standing at the forefront of the business trend as the "smallest innovation unit".

In this change, the popularity of OpenClaw is becoming a new catalyst. As AI truly moves from "being able to think" to "being able to work", a question emerges: Has the era when one person can be a whole team really arrived?

The Cyber "Lobster Farmer": The Birth of a Super Individual

Fu Sheng introduced his "lobster - raising" experience during a live - broadcast. His "lobster" is named "Sanwan", which can send New Year greeting messages in different styles to 600 employees in 4 minutes and build a website in one night.

An AI agent can transform into a cyber labor team, which makes more people eager to "bring the lobster home" to work.

The scientific name of the "lobster" is OpenClaw, developed by Austrian independent developer Peter Steinberger. It has won 254,000 GitHub stars in just 3 months, topped the GitHub star list, and has over 300,000 active users globally, setting the fastest - rising record for an open - source project.

Max is also one of the "lobster farmers". He deeply integrates OpenClaw into his business to form a closed - loop: Let the AI automatically check emails and filter important information, regularly capture international news to generate self - media topics, and then acquire customers through content promotion, undertaking To C services such as AI education and AI job - hunting, forming a complete business logic of "AI tool efficiency improvement + content customer acquisition + lightweight service monetization".

Another identity of Max is an explorer of one - person companies.

The rise of one - person companies is highly synchronized with the iteration of AI model capabilities. From theoretical feasibility to practical implementation, every breakthrough in AI technology is clearing obstacles for this new business form.

In 2023, when Max dropped out of school to start an AI business, the one - person company was just a concept on paper. At that time, AI models had a high hallucination rate and weak tool - calling ability. Core tasks such as development and operation all needed to be done manually. "It was simply unrealistic for one person to support the entire business."

It wasn't until 2025 that the emergence of large models such as Claude 4.5 and GPT 5 became a key turning point. The hallucination rate of the models decreased significantly, and the tool - calling ability achieved a qualitative leap. AI agents could independently complete the entire process of task decomposition, execution, and verification, which provided a solid technological foundation for the implementation of one - person companies.

The popularity of OpenClaw has further catalyzed the trend of users using AI to become "super individuals".

The key behind this is that OpenClaw has broken through the bottleneck of AI being "only able to think but unable to act". Through the local operation mode, OpenClaw can directly control tools such as computer files, emails, and browsers, becoming a "digital employee" that never rests. Using browsers, filling out forms, sending emails, organizing folders, and calling other software. This leap from "thinking" to "acting" has turned AI from a "consultant" into an "employee".

This precisely hits the core pain point of one - person companies, which is "single - person operation with efficiency as the top priority". Entrepreneurs don't need to form a team. They can use AI agents to complete the work of multiple positions in traditional enterprises.

After OpenClaw triggered a boom, domestic large - scale enterprises quickly followed up. Cloud providers, model providers, and hardware providers have launched deployment services and solutions to lower the threshold. From Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Volcengine to Zhipu and Xiaomi, they have all entered the market. This has made "lobster - raising" move from the geek circle to the mass market, and the "single person + AI" model has become a replicable and scalable entrepreneurial paradigm.

Data shows that the market scale of one - person companies is expected to exceed 800 billion yuan from 2026 to 2030, and AI technology can increase the efficiency of a single person by 8 - 10 times.

What's it like to have AI "workers" work for you?

The rapid rise of one - person companies is essentially that AI technology has magnified the core advantages of individual entrepreneurship. Compared with traditional companies or partnership models, their decision - making efficiency and business flexibility have been pushed to a new height.

Max has a deep understanding of this. In the traditional entrepreneurial model, a small team needs at least 3 people to be responsible for technology, business, and the market respectively. It takes multiple meetings and approvals to formulate a plan. "Too many people making decisions can easily lead to a deviation in direction."

In a one - person company, the founder has the final say. There is no need to accommodate the opinions of the team, and there are no cumbersome processes. It can quickly respond to market changes and accurately enter the niche markets that large enterprises "are reluctant to do, unable to do, or do poorly".

For example, Max's multiple AI entrepreneurial projects all follow the logic of "taking small steps and moving fast". It only takes 1 - 2 weeks from identifying pain points around him to developing a product prototype. After the product is launched, it can quickly obtain market feedback and make adjustments, and initial results can be seen within a month. This high - efficiency iteration speed is difficult for traditional enterprises to achieve.

AI tools enable founders to take on the work of multiple positions, giving full play to the flexibility and efficiency of one - person companies. However, every coin has two sides. While one - person companies enjoy the efficiency dividends brought by AI, they cannot escape the inherent dilemmas. The most prominent one is the "decision - making isolation" problem.

Without the experience verification of a human team or partners, when the AI malfunctions or makes wrong judgments, it is difficult for the founder to independently verify the correctness of the results, which has become the biggest operational risk for one - person companies.

Max admitted that this is the biggest challenge he has encountered in his entrepreneurial process. "In the past, I could discuss and verify with partners. Now, I can only rely on my own experience and understanding of AI to control the situation."

In addition, one - person companies do not have the resource endorsement and safety - net mechanism of large companies, and their risk - resistance ability is relatively weak. Once they encounter market competition or business failure, the founder has to bear all the losses alone, and the survival pressure is much greater than that of traditional enterprises.

Meanwhile, the warning of 'raising lobsters is risky' is also spreading rapidly. Max also pays attention to the boundaries when using AI tools. For example, OpenClaw is an automated operation assistant, while pure development work is handed over to more professional AI tools.

More notably, the core advantages of general AI tools represented by OpenClaw are concentrated in pure online digital scenarios. Entrepreneurs in traditional industries can hardly feel the same enabling effect.

Taking the typical traditional small - scale foreign - trade startup model as an example, the enabling effect of AI only stays at the surface - level operation link. For the core links of foreign - trade business, such as product selection, supply - chain docking, logistics coordination, and offline customer communication, AI tools can hardly play a role.

Product selection requires on - site inspections of manufacturers and verification of product quality. Supply - chain cooperation requires building trust between people. Logistics issues require real - time manual communication. These offline and subjective - judgment - required links are currently difficult for AI to replace.

This also shows that the enabling effect of AI on one - person companies is not a "one - size - fits - all" solution. The new business form and the traditional business form have completely different adaptation logics.

How big a business can a one - person company do?

With the continuous iteration of AI technology and the improvement of the industry ecosystem, the future form of one - person companies has long gone beyond the initial stage of "fighting alone".

In the eyes of entrepreneurs like Max, the future of one - person companies is a "federal model" of loose alliances, and the larger business picture is a polarized pattern where super individuals and super enterprises coexist.

Max believes that the ultimate form of a one - person company is not that the founder takes on all the work alone, but a "loose federation" composed of multiple one - person companies. Each entrepreneur focuses on their most - proficient field and completes complex projects through resource sharing and intellectual collaboration.

For example, a one - person company focusing on AI technology can cooperate with one - person companies engaged in content customer acquisition and business monetization. Each can give full play to their advantages, not only retaining the flexibility and efficiency of one - person companies but also integrating resources to meet more complex market demands, making up for the shortcoming of the weak risk - resistance ability of a single individual. In this model, individuals are no longer isolated but form an interconnected entrepreneurial network, and the effect of 1 + 1>2 is evident.

From the development trend of the entire business organization, AI technology will push the business pattern towards "polarization": On one hand, large enterprises use AI to reduce costs and increase efficiency, continuously streamline their organizational structures, and become "platform - type organizations" focusing on core businesses. Non - core businesses are outsourced through the "platform + one - person company" model, making full use of the flexibility and professionalism of super individuals.

On the other hand, super individuals use AI to magnify their own abilities and become "super studios" deeply involved in niche fields, embedding themselves in the industrial chain of large enterprises and becoming indispensable "gap fillers" in the industrial chain.

In this pattern, one - person companies are no longer marginal entrepreneurial forms but have become the basic component units of the future business ecosystem, forming a symbiotic relationship with super enterprises.

In addition to technological support, the support policies of local governments are also paving the way for the development of this new business form of one - person companies.

Since the end of 2025, many places such as Suzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing have successively introduced support policies for one - person companies, covering aspects such as computing - power support, legal and financial services, tax incentives, and office - space subsidies, reducing the burden on one - person companies from the entrepreneurial threshold to the operating cost in an all - around way.

In response to the development of AI tools such as OpenClaw, Shenzhen has introduced the "Ten Rules for Lobster - Raising", Wuxi has released the "Twelve Rules for Lobster - Raising", and Chancheng District of Foshan has even joined hands with China Telecom to launch free OpenClaw deployment services. While warning of risks and standardizing the development of the AI industry, these also provide policy support for the integration of AI tools and one - person companies.

The rise of one - person companies is essentially the liberation of individual creativity by AI technology, and it is an inevitable result of the evolution of business organization forms towards a more efficient and flexible direction.

AI is never a tool to replace humans but a lever to magnify human abilities. For entrepreneurs of one - person companies, the real core competitiveness will always be people's strategic vision, industry resources, and risk - bearing capacity, and AI is the key to giving full play to these abilities.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Bianbian", author: Gao Ze. Republished by 36Kr with permission.