Gusto has introduced Cofounder, an AI agent designed to help small businesses automate routine administrative work across the tools they already use. The payroll and benefits company said the product was built in nine weeks and is intended to make artificial intelligence more practical for operators that do not have the time or resources to assemble their own systems.
Eddie Kim, Gusto’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said the company sees Cofounder as its most significant launch to date. The agent is built on top of foundation models from OpenAI and is meant to connect different business platforms so owners can delegate tasks through plain-language prompts.
According to Gusto, those tasks include payroll-related work, generating reports and reviewing expenses. Kim described this as handling the “work before the work,” meaning the administrative jobs that can pull owners away from the product or service they actually want to build.
The launch comes as companies of all sizes increasingly experiment with AI, but small businesses often lag behind larger enterprises in adoption. Gusto pointed to a survey of 1,500 small business owners in which about one-third said AI has already made it easier to start their businesses. Still, Kim argued that many smaller companies face a different challenge than large firms. They may see the value of AI, but lack the technical staff, budget or spare time to customize it.
Kim said Cofounder is meant to address what he called the blank canvas problem. In practice, that means the system is intended to be useful immediately because it already understands core business context such as team information, payroll schedules, benefits and compliance deadlines. Gusto said the platform includes 20 prebuilt automations to help owners identify where to start and to flag risks, anomalies or upcoming filings.
The company is also positioning Cofounder as an integration layer for the software many small businesses already depend on. Gusto said the agent connects with platforms such as Slack, Google Workspace and Notion. Security and permissions are another key part of the pitch. The company said Cofounder inherits permissioning features from its payroll product and includes a consent framework designed to keep owners in control of what the agent can do.
Gusto is not alone in pursuing this market. Other AI companies have started to focus on small and medium-sized businesses, a segment that industry watchers say remains largely underserved despite its size. But Gusto believes its existing role inside thousands of businesses gives it an advantage, since it can build AI tools around workflows it already supports.
Kim said the broader goal is to automate enough back-office work that owners can spend more time on the reason they started their businesses in the first place. He said that in the future, small businesses may increasingly run with a large automated layer operating behind the scenes.
For now, Cofounder reflects a familiar trend in enterprise AI that is moving downmarket. Rather than asking small business owners to become AI experts, Gusto is betting that the most useful products will be the ones that fit into everyday operations with minimal setup and clear controls.