Rise of the agentic workforce
AI agents are conquering the job market. A commentary by Verena Gründel.
A close friend of mine is about to go on maternity leave. She runs a cosmetics start-up, supported only by a few temporary staff. Every aspect of marketing–from content planning and social media to campaign execution–is on her. In front of the camera and behind the scenes.
A good maternity leave replacement is too expensive, and she has had bad experiences with marketing assistants. Her solution: to hand over marketing to AI-based systems as much as possible.
She has found that true process automation is still a challenge. But at least it is possible to free up more time to spend with her baby.
The agentic workforce
Her story is exemplary of a growing movement among micro-entrepreneurs, freelancers, solo founders, and influencers. More and more of them are using artificial intelligence not only to generate text or images. They are establishing AI as assistants from the outset–and thus don’t need to build teams in the first place.
A study by Wondercraft shows: Over 80 percent of creators already use AI in their daily work. For research, content creation and optimization, marketing processes, programming, consulting, sparring, contract review, customer service, and much more. All without needing a line of code.
Also among freelancers, the use of tools is already much more advanced than what I see in companies. This trend is particularly evident among young start-ups. Out of necessity, they adapt new tools faster–as they always have–and build automation in from the ground up. The result? Lower barriers to entry, faster scalability, and a whole new way of working.
The AI agent job exchange
AI could produce the first one-person unicorn, according to media reports this summer. Maybe. But the real story is this: we’re already moving in that direction. Platforms are already emerging that bring together AI agent jobs or even hybrid teams of freelancers and AI agents.
Start-ups with large AI agent teams have a decisive advantage over long-established companies with established structures: they work much more leanly and cheaply than their established competitors. This will put particular pressure on large corporations that fail to follow suit in time.
The enhanced founder
Will this trend turn everyone into a start-up billionaire? A few–certainly. But certainly not all. After all, the AI workforce is only a market advantage as long as not every company has one.
Will the increasing use of AI lead to a loss of quality or a devaluation of human work? No, in many cases the opposite is true: individuals who rely on intelligent automation can focus more on what really makes a difference–attitude, style, and human perspective.
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