Gusto, one of the leading partners for small businesses, recently announced the launch of Gusto Cofounder, an AI teammate built specifically for small business owners. Unlike general-purpose AI tools that start from a blank slate, Cofounder launches with context from Gusto and customer-authorized connected tools, including a business’s team, payroll schedule, benefits, and Gusto compliance calendar, and can immediately start taking action on behalf of small businesses.
The launch comes as America’s entrepreneurship boom accelerates. New business applications are running above 500,000 a month, near record highs. According to Gusto’s 2026 New Business Formation Report, 60% of new business owners used AI to help launch their business in 2025 — double the rate from just two years ago. Half said AI made the process significantly faster or less expensive.
“Small business owners are some of the most resourceful people in the world, but they’re consistently stretched too thin,” said Eddie Kim, Co-founder and Head of Technology at Gusto. “For most, running payroll isn’t the hard part — it’s everything they have to do ahead of running it. Pulling data from other systems, manipulating spreadsheets, chasing down missing inputs – the ‘work before the work.’ It’s one of the most hidden burdens of running a business and Gusto Cofounder was built to take that off their plates entirely.”
Cofounder is designed to handle the operational work that consumes small business owners’ time like running payroll, helping flag compliance risks, chasing missing timesheets, and surfacing staffing conflicts before they become issues. Owners can direct Cofounder through natural conversation via SMS, Slack, or the web with prompts like:
- “Run payroll for this Friday and flag anything that needs my approval before it submits.”
- “Generate a weekly labor cost report by department and send it to me every Monday morning.”
- “Send me an approval request for any team expense over USD 25 before it gets processed.”
- “Flag any time-off requests that overlap with payroll deadlines or leave the team short-staffed.”
Cofounder also monitors businesses proactively, with more than 20 pre-built automations covering onboarding, payroll, expense approvals, and compliance tasks— patterns learned from the over 500,000 small businesses using the Gusto platform.
“Cofounder allows you to interact with Gusto in a real human way. It feels like you’re talking to a person. It’s doing all of the Gusto things behind the scenes for me.” — David Levin, CEO, Angry Sam Productions
Gusto Cofounder integrates with Google Workspace, Notion, Slack, and other tools small businesses already use. Guardrails keep humans in control of key decisions while Cofounder handles the routine and flags exceptions.
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