Faster Than They Can Master It: AI Adoption Climbs While Hiring Slips

Key Trends

• Thryv’s 2026 AI and Small Business Adoption Survey found AI adoption among U.S. small businesses rose to 66% in April, up from 55% a year earlier, with 70% of owners saying AI increased revenue and 55% saying it cut costs. But the same survey found 70% still need more training to use the tools effectively, even though 86% call themselves comfortable using AI — a gap Thryv president Grant Freeman said means “many SMBs are adopting AI faster than they can master it.”

  Review

  Adoption figures come from a Thryv-commissioned survey; Thryv sells AI tools to the same small-business audience it surveyed. Suggested action: add > [!unverified] flag, consistent with the Jota bullet below which flags similarly self-reported figures.

• Intuit’s QuickBooks Small Business Index for June shows the sector employed 12,806,300 people, down 12,400 jobs from May — a 0.10% decline spread across all 12 tracked sectors, with leisure and hospitality hit hardest. The adoption story and the payroll story are moving in opposite directions.

Notable Businesses & Launches

• Platform Accounting Group acquired The Hultquist Firm in Greenville, South Carolina, rebranding it as Milestone Advisors — the Utah-based roll-up’s first South Carolina deal after entering Pennsylvania in April and Florida in March. Milestone serves individuals and small-to-midsize businesses, and the pace of PE-backed consolidation among the regional CPA firms that SMBs depend on for tax and advisory work continues to accelerate.

Funding & Investment

• Stockholm-founded Float raised a €4.5 million Series A led by CHAPTERS Group AG to expand its revenue-based financing platform for European tech SMEs — non-dilutive capital aimed at founders who don’t want to give up equity for growth funding.

• Brazilian fintech Jota raised a $30 million Series A led by Haun Ventures at a $185 million post-money valuation — the VC firm’s first Brazilian investment. Jota’s AI-powered digital account lets entrepreneurs pay by text, audio, or photo over WhatsApp; the company plans to launch an integrated lending product with the new capital.

  Unverified

  Jota’s growth targets — reaching 1 million users and R$50 million in annualized monthly revenue by December — are company-stated projections, not independently verified figures.

Regulatory & Economic Context

• The Department of War suspended CMMC Phase II certification requirements that were set to take effect November 10, after the SBA argued the framework was cost-prohibitive for small defense contractors. SBA analysis put third-party assessment costs at roughly $593,800 per small firm and self-assessment at $388,600 — a burden that would have hit more than 120,000 small businesses in the defense industrial base, backed by a pool of only about 100 approved assessors.
• The SBA suspended 7,800 Wisconsin borrowers tied to $375 million in suspected fraudulent PPP and COVID EIDL loans, the latest in a state-by-state campaign that has now suspended more than 150,000 borrowers nationally tied to over $10 billion in suspected pandemic-era fraud, including prior actions in California ($8.6B), Ohio ($1.1B), Minnesota ($400M), and Maine ($93M). Suspended borrowers are barred from future SBA loans and programs like 8(a) contracting.

Takeaway