One Person Is a Team: The "Solo Company" Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Is Emerging

Reporter Mao Yirong

A person is a team. This new entrepreneurial ecosystem called “One Person Company” (OPC) is rapidly emerging.

Outside the northwest Fifth Ring Road in Beijing, Zhongguancun AI Beiwang Community is quietly operating. As the first community in Beijing to launch an AI OPC service plan, there are no noisy team discussions or stacked office partitions here. Just a high-performance computer and several AI interaction interfaces running on the screen—this is almost all an OPC entrepreneur’s “belongings.”

60 kilometers away, in the Tongming Lake Information City within the Economic Development Zone, the modular OPC community is speeding up renovations. This OPC community, with a planned area of 10,000 square meters, has an ambitious goal: to cultivate 10,000 independent AI developers within two years.

Regions are also racing to attract OPC entrepreneurs. For example, Shenzhen released the “Shenzhen Action Plan to Build an AI OPC Entrepreneurship Ecosystem (2026–2027)” in January this year, aiming to create a clustered, innovative AI OPC entrepreneurial environment; Suzhou is accelerating to become the “Global Preferred City for OPC Startups,” planning to establish over 30 OPC communities by 2028; Qingdao has issued multiple OPC business licenses to support AI startups… This AI-driven entrepreneurial revolution is moving from concept to practice.

What exactly is an OPC? Why is it emerging now? How will government support influence industry development? In which fields are OPC entrepreneurs concentrated? What are investors’ attitudes? Recently, a reporter from Securities Daily visited the “Modular OPC Community” built by the Beijing Yizhuang National Innovation Park, interviewing industry experts, OPC platform founders, and policymakers to outline the growth trajectory and future prospects of this new business model.

New Business Model:

“Digital Employees” Reshape Enterprise Production Units

OPC is not a traditional sole proprietorship but a new entrepreneurial model where individuals use AI tools to handle standardized tasks such as code generation, content creation, and customer service, focusing on strategic decisions and creative design.

Lian Yunbo, head of the AI Excellence Center at China Academy of Information and Communications Technology’s Cloud Big Data Institute, provided a more precise definition in an interview: “The rise of OPC in the AI era is not about reducing the number of employees but about reconstructing the smallest production units of enterprises. It is a ‘light organization’ model consisting of ‘one core decision-maker + multiple digital employees + platform resources.’”

For example, Beijing Nezha Interactive Technology Co., founded by Peking University alumni Su Kui, is a typical OPC example. He treats AI tools like Doubao as “digital employees” for tasks such as promotional poster generation, copywriting, and algorithm optimization. He personally handles product, R&D, and marketing, achieving a rapid closed-loop from product development to commercialization, and developed the “Dragon Bone Animation” platform. This platform profits by providing paid professional tools to game developers and independent creators, allowing users to generate interactive animations simply by inputting natural language commands.

The emergence of this model is no coincidence. By the end of 2024, China’s new employment forms will reach about 240 million workers, with approximately 84 million flexible workers. In this large-scale context, AI development has become a key opportunity. Xiang Shang, founder of the national OPC community platform WeOPC, told Securities Daily: “Business actions that previously required large teams, like customer service, which might have needed 5,000 people, can now be operated by AI Agents with less than one-tenth of that.”

In terms of entrepreneurial fields, OPCs are currently distributed across multiple sectors. Typical directions include AI agent development and digital human services, intelligent call systems and enterprise services, AIGC content creation and IP operation, AI + education or biopharmaceutical R&D, cross-border e-commerce, and live streaming.

A person responsible for the “Modular OPC Community” in Yizhuang, Beijing, told Securities Daily that over 20 OPCs have settled in, mainly in AIGC visual generation, software development, and AI hardware.

According to Xiang Shang, among the OPC entrepreneurs they are in contact with, there are mature teams with completed business loops, professionals capable of independent development or AI drama production, and about half are in the exploratory stage. “We even see very young entrepreneurs who can create products with commercial value using code. This shows AI is indeed lowering the barriers to creation.”

Ms. Kong from Hangzhou, an OPC entrepreneur, said: “Our company develops virtual idol band IPs, leading the full chain from character modeling to music, storytelling, and short videos—all done independently by our team. We hold online meetings twice a week to control project progress, and communicate work details online. Platforms like WeOPC help connect relevant professionals for collaboration and resource sharing.”

New Driving Force:

Local Governments “Set the Stage” to Unlock Capacity

In response to this emerging business model, local governments have shown high enthusiasm and targeted support strategies. Since the end of 2025, cities like Beijing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Shenzhen have released OPC-related plans, built dedicated startup parks for OPC companies, attracting AI talent; or provided services such as OPC business license processing and tax incentives.

The person in charge of the “Modular OPC Community” said that construction is underway, and the community is expected to officially open in early April. Over 20 OPC entrepreneurs have already obtained business licenses. Some are local, some have migrated from other provinces, and some are newly registered. The process and timing vary. The government has also arranged temporary office spaces for these OPCs and coordinated housing through talent policies. Yizhuang is also researching a “real-time computing power deduction platform,” which will allow OPC entrepreneurs to enjoy discounts when calling on computing resources after moving into the community. Currently, OPC entrepreneurs enjoy rent-free policies.

More importantly, support policies are no longer just rent reductions. To address difficulties in obtaining corporate services and stable orders, Yizhuang has introduced two major measures: first, the “Real-Time Computing Power Deduction Platform,” expected to launch in April, allowing OPCs to access discounted computing power; second, the government actively releases orders.

“The community will distribute no fewer than 100 real orders annually to OPCs, covering high-frequency scenarios such as content generation, visual design, and IP promotion,” the official said. Most of the first batch of OPCs are already profitable, with only one or two staff members, yet they can secure tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan in orders annually, with larger ones reaching over 10 million yuan.

Why are governments rushing to deploy? “OPC will at least bring three impacts,” said Lian Yunbo. “First, significantly lowering the entrepreneurial threshold, allowing innovation to first verify demand and then expand organizations; second, accelerating innovation in vertical niche tracks, enabling rapid iteration around specific scenarios; third, pushing infrastructure upgrades—improving computing power, data, skills markets, and evaluation systems. The promotion of OPC communities in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, etc., is essentially an early layout of this AI-native entrepreneurial infrastructure.”

Behind this booming development, OPCs also face growing pains. Due to difficulties in registering as formal market entities initially, they encounter obstacles in signing contracts and issuing invoices. Moreover, traditional startup policies mainly target teams with employees and physical premises, while OPC costs are mainly in digital assets like computing power and cloud services, with a lack of targeted standards and support tools.

JiMi Technology Chairman Zhong Bo suggested exploring the establishment of a “Digital One-Person Enterprise” system within the current legal framework, improving tax and fee policies supporting digital production factors, and including AI subscription and cloud service costs in deductible expenses.

On the regulatory side, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued risk alerts for deploying AI Agent tools. Lian Yunbo believes that balancing innovation and regulation requires four points: maintaining layered architecture, adhering to the principle of least privilege, conducting pre-acceptance evaluations, and incorporating compliance costs into business models. “Regulation is not opposed to OPC but a necessary premise for supporting its transition from a concept craze to industry mainstream.”

Industry experts generally believe that regulation should follow an inclusive and cautious approach—“standardize first, then grow”—and quickly develop clear, compliant guidelines for data use and advertising.

New Challenges:

How Will Mature Forms Evolve?

Capital’s sensitivity is also sharp. According to Xiang Shang, after media reports, the WeOPC platform quickly attracted government-led competitions, individual investors, and some overseas capital seeking to invest in OPCs. Currently, WeOPC has partnered with an individual investor, with project investments ranging from 100,000 to 2 million yuan. “This is already a good start for OPC angel rounds.”

Flexible capital support makes financing less distant. “Modular OPC Community” plans to establish a “Micro VC” acceleration fund, linking regional talent funds and seed funds. “Some OPC entrepreneurs are already in contact with investment institutions or have received investment intentions, while others are still early-stage and haven’t engaged yet. We are working on two fronts: one, promoting market-oriented funds for exposure; two, establishing government-guided funds dedicated to OPC investments,” the community official told Securities Daily.

However, there is no consensus yet on exit cycles. Xiang Shang said that the OPC industry is still flourishing, with different project types, and investors will decide on investment amounts, co-investment, equity, and exit conditions based on project progress.

From an investment logic perspective, OPC investors focus more on cash returns and revenue-sharing models. An AI investor from Zhejiang told us: “Investing in OPCs is about early-stage low-cost investments in entrepreneurs, waiting for the business model to mature for easier exit. In the AI era, the return on investment should be higher than in the internet era.”

Despite market enthusiasm, many OPC entrepreneurs still harbor doubts: I rely on AI to do everything now, but in five or ten years, when all competitors have the same AI tools, where is my moat? This frontline confusion hits at the core of OPC’s future evolution. What will mature OPC forms look like?

Lian Yunbo believes that OPCs will not just be “one person doing everything” or “one founder plus several chatbots,” but more likely evolve into a “core decision-maker + N professional digital employees + external platform resources” organizational unit. “Future competition will no longer be just between people but between ‘people + digital employee systems.’ Whoever develops a high-quality data, workflow, industry knowledge, and trustworthy governance system first will likely gain a new scale advantage.”

Deeper impacts include a shift in social organization from “job-based” to “capability package-based.” Companies will no longer mainly rely on fixed positions but on programmable, governable digital capability networks. OPCs will initially reshape fields such as knowledge-intensive, process-standardized, and light-assets operations—including knowledge services, digital business scenarios, enterprise back-office functions, and industrial service scenes.

Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of Zhijiang Laboratory, Wang Jian, views OPC as a minimized form of small and medium enterprises. “The rapid development of AI offers great opportunities for SMEs, but it requires practice—it’s not a ready-made solution sitting on the entrepreneur’s desk.”

As emphasized in this year’s Government Work Report, “Make good use of the National Venture Capital Guidance Fund and vigorously develop venture capital and angel investment.” For OPCs, this AI-driven entrepreneurial revolution has just begun. Whether it will evolve from a “one-person” solo act into a “people + digital employees” industry symphony remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: as the smallest unit of entrepreneurship is redefined, a more vibrant and resilient era of innovation is on the horizon.