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AI tools are helping businesses find new ways to improve the productivity of small, skilled teams. Small teams are no longer at a disadvantage and can produce quality work at high speeds. Business growth is open to all with AI tools.

For growing businesses, the question is no longer whether to use AI but how to use it wisely and securely. Industries from materials science and wedding marketplaces to private investigators are leveraging AI to discover new business opportunities. AI, used securely and intelligently with human oversight, can be the perfect way to find new growth opportunities. AI is becoming the go-to source for building business growth. 

Compressing Time Using a Universal Language

AI compresses traditional industrial materials discovery processes from decades to weeks. Traditional materials discovery takes around 15 years or more and costs up to $5 billion per material. Using Dunia’s AI and robotics platform, analyzing complex multi-dimensional variables and materials takes weeks instead of years. 

“We run 90% more experiments efficiently, at 70% less OPEX. But at the same time, it gives the team new knowledge and new languages to speak with each other,” explains Ahmed Ismail, co-founder of Dunia. Dunia’s platform analyzes multidimensional variables at speed, screening hundreds of materials per day. AI serves as a universal language understood by all team members, naturally increasing productivity. 

“It gives you this universal language. You feed all your information, and it finds all these parameters, and depending on which team gives the input, it gives back an output that they understand. That has been quite useful for us,” he says.

5X Growth Improvement in a Single Area

Hamza Amir founded and built Jab We Wed to serve the wedding market for South Asian couples in North America planning multi-day celebrations. With a 10-person team, Amir uses AI to make strategic decisions while onboarding vendors. When using AI, the team has experienced an initial 5X growth in the number of vendors onboarded per day. Amir’s team recognizes that AI information may contain errors, so every detail is reviewed by a human. 

“While we greatly depend on AI, it still makes dumb mistakes. If we were to just completely, totally depend on AI, then I think it’s kind of a mess we’re eventually creating. That human touch is super important,” Amir says.

Closing Complex Investigations in Hours 

TK Kitts founded and leads Redbeard Intelligence & Investigations, a private intelligence firm specializing in cybercrime and due diligence. Kitts says AI’s speed advantage is most visible in cryptocurrency fraud cases, in which investigations that once took months can now produce timelines in hours. 

“The automation factor provided through AI is able to really streamline some of the mundane processes that would have taken a human investigator weeks on end to accomplish. We are now able to accomplish it in a matter of maybe a few hours at most,” Kitts says. 

In a recent $3 billion crypto scam investigation, AI mapped millions of blockchain transactions and identified key actors in minutes. Redbeard Intelligence & Investigations operates under strict security requirements. The firm uses only custom-trained, offline AI models, ensuring that sensitive client data never touches a cloud service. Kitts calls this “investigator-directed intelligence.” The team at Redbeard uses AI as a highly productive assistant, not a decision-maker. 

A Three-Year Project Completed in Three Months

Renee Fry, CEO and co-founder of Gentreo, has built an estate planning platform that helps financial partners anticipate customers’ needs. Through participation in Palantir Foundry’s AI program, Fry’s seven-person team completed a three-year development project in three months. Rapid collaborative development using AI tools like Claude enables Gentreo to complete quality projects in less time. 

“With AI, we’ve been able to flip the tables. Instead of customers having to come and pick a solution from a plethora of things they have no idea about, we can actually help our partners meet people where they are in life. It’s a game changer in the products you can offer,” Fry explains.

Business Growth That Scales 

Anthony Koltenuk is building Pledged, a platform that helps universities manage and track their corporate partnerships. Koltenuk’s team of five uses a $200-per-month AI subscription to operate at the pace of a much larger organization. Koltenuk is direct about what makes the difference: it’s not the AI tools but the experience of the team using them. 

“We’re still using a $200 subscription, and that is enough for us to accelerate and meet the pace of a much larger team. I’ve heard about teams spending tens of thousands of dollars per person on these subscriptions, and I don’t think they’re going faster than us. I think they have a lot more to fix in the end because they don’t have that experience,” Koltenuk says.

The Importance of Human Oversight

Across multiple types of industries, the pattern is consistent: AI creates the most value when it’s targeted at a specific bottleneck and paired with experienced human oversight. The companies seeing exceptional business growth aren’t chasing AI for its own sake; they’re identifying where speed, scale, or data analysis provides business growth when partnered with discipline and experience.