Mark Cuban Tells Grads to Start Their Job Hunt at Small Businesses

Mark Cuban told recent college graduates to start their job search at small businesses in a June 2 X post, arguing that AI will let those firms compete with companies that have bigger technology budgets. The billionaire pointed to small businesses creating about 60% of new US jobs each year and said the share will only rise as AI makes smaller players faster. His pitch landed as large companies thin their entry-level ranks to fund AI, and small businesses keep hiring. Cuban framed the gap as an opening for graduates fluent in the tools, since the smallest firms lack the depth to set them up themselves.

The Post and the Pushback It Drew

Cuban’s June 2 X post to graduates ran as a four-point list. The thread drew hundreds of replies, several of which Cuban answered in line.

1. Small Business creates ~60% of new jobs every year
2. AI makes it easier and faster for them to compete with larger companies.
3. The % of jobs created by Small biz every year will only increase.
4. Start your job search with small businesses

One X user pushed back, arguing small businesses would use AI to stay lean and cut headcount. Cuban rejected the read in the same thread, noting that the smallest firms do not have AI expertise and need help setting it up. He framed the gap as a job specifically for recent graduates and pointed to the same thread as the post’s main counter-argument to the ‘AI means lean’ thesis. The exchange also fixed the post’s two-sided read in public.

The smallest businesses don’t have the depth of expertise in AI. They need the help. Kids coming out of college have that expertise.

Cuban was worth $10.3 billion at the time of Entrepreneur’s write-up, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Another X user joked that joining a small business gives an employee five years of experience in 14 months, and Cuban replied with one word: “Facts.”

Where the Entry-Level Market Stands

The argument lands on a market that has shrunk. Postings for entry-level jobs in the US have dropped 35% over the last 18 months, in large part pinned on AI by research firm Revelio Labs, according to the analysis of how AI is reshaping US entry-level work. The drop is concentrated in the tasks AI handles fastest: data entry, customer support, and junior coding work, the same tier of jobs that fed the white-collar pipeline into management for decades.

Goldman Sachs’ research arm put out a March estimate that around 300 million jobs globally are exposed to AI automation, with about a quarter of all US work hours potentially handled by AI systems. The forecast does not break the work into cuts and creations, but it is the scale most cited in boardrooms. The optimistic counterpoint comes from the World Economic Forum, which predicted last year that AI would create 78 million jobs globally, even after factoring in losses.

Newer roles the WEF highlighted, such as AI integration specialists and human-AI collaboration managers, barely existed a few years ago. They cover work the entry-level layer used to do, and that is the gap Cuban is pointing grads to fill.

Generative AI is also lifting productivity, per a 2025 study cited by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Workers using the tools saved an average of 2.2 hours in a 40-hour workweek and saw a 1.1% boost in overall output, with the largest gains among less-experienced employees, the cohort Cuban is targeting.

Big Tech’s Lean-Out, Small Business’s Catch-Up

The clearest example of the lean side is Block, the fintech parent of Square. In February, CEO Jack Dorsey announced the company would cut 40% of its workforce, citing AI. In a letter to shareholders, Dorsey framed the cuts as a productivity win for a smaller team using the company’s own intelligence tools. About 4,000 workers lost their jobs in the round.

A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week.

That stance is becoming common among large companies that have already built AI infrastructure, and it removes the entry-level layer they once used to train. Small businesses do not have that layer to begin with, which is exactly where Cuban is pointing grads. The redistribution changes which type of firm is in the business of training the next cohort.

The Gap a Graduate Is Supposed to Fill

Cuban’s pitch hinges on a specific gap. The report on Cuban’s 14% AI-embedded figure and TBPN remarks notes Cuban has said just 14% of businesses have embedded AI across their organizations, and that millions of smaller firms do not have dedicated AI budgets. The smallest of them are figuring out for the first time what a large language model can do, and they have no IT team to set it up.

Recent graduates, in Cuban’s framing, walk in with the specific skill those firms need. Two years of using AI for research, writing, and analysis gives a new grad skills a 20-person local shop cannot afford to build in-house, and the value shows up on day one. A grad with that experience can run the AI tools the owner is still learning to ask about.

The hiring numbers back the small-business end. US Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that between the third quarter of 2020 and the third quarter of 2025, companies with fewer than 250 employees accounted for 51% of net job creation in the country, per the article that paired the post with BLS net-job-creation data. The small business share of net new hiring is already larger than the share held by larger employers.

The Demand Problem Underneath the Bet

The redistribution Cuban describes still lands on a smaller pie. Even at the small-business end, the share of new jobs entering the market each year is set against a backdrop of 35% fewer entry-level postings. A grad with strong AI skills can choose among more small-business openings than a peer without them, but the total pool of first jobs has been compressed.

The World Economic Forum’s March analysis is blunt about why. The short-term efficiencies that organizations could gain by cutting junior talent mask longer-term risks, it wrote, citing slower AI adoption, weaker succession plans, and stalled knowledge transfer. The companies that go furthest in cutting junior roles are the same ones that will have to rebuild the pipeline later, and the work being absorbed upward into middle management is already a strain.

Some large employers are reading that trade-off the other way. Cognizant, the IT services firm, said in the same WEF piece that it hired 25,000 fresh graduates in 2025 and expects to exceed that number in 2026, even as it leans on AI internally. The bet there is that AI-fluent entry-level workers accelerate adoption.

The next 12 months will be the first real test of Cuban’s frame. Goldman Sachs’ 300-million-jobs exposure figure is a global ceiling, and the WEF’s 78-million-jobs figure is net of losses. The split between the two depends on whether small-business AI adoption moves as fast as Cuban thinks it will, and on whether recent grads actually arrive fluent enough to staff it.

The early-career pipeline is being rewritten in real time. The roles a 22-year-old applies to in 2026 look different from the ones the class of 2022 applied to, and the firms hiring them are, on the data, smaller on average than the ones that hired four years ago.

Cuban Has Run This Play Before

The June 2 post is not Cuban’s first version of the argument. In December 2025, he urged new graduates to join small and midsize businesses because they could help those firms adopt AI agents and automate processes that were previously out of reach, per the December write-up of Cuban’s prior advice to grads. “Big companies don’t need new grads for this,” he wrote at the time. “Entrepreneurial companies will love the value you add.” The June post updates the same pitch with labor-market data attached.

1. December 2025: Cuban told new grads to join small and midsize businesses to help them adopt AI agents.
2. 2025 (TBPN podcast): “Learn all you can about AI, but learn more about how to implement [it] in companies.”
3. June 2, 2026: Cuban’s four-point X post naming small businesses as the share of new hiring that will rise fastest.

Cuban is betting the small businesses creating most new US jobs will pull in early-career AI talent, and the Fortune 500 farm system for junior workers is already a thing of the past. The class of 2026 is the first cohort where that read is testable, and the BLS data through next June will be the first real measure of whether small-business AI hiring absorbs the entry-level class.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Mark Cuban say about AI and jobs for new graduates?

On June 2, 2026, Cuban posted a four-point list on X arguing that small businesses create about 60% of new US jobs each year and that AI will make it easier and faster for those firms to compete with larger companies. He told readers to start their job search at small businesses, adding that recent graduates have the AI expertise those firms need and big companies do not have the same gap to fill.

Why are small businesses better for new graduates in the AI era?

Cuban argues that the smallest firms do not have the depth of AI expertise in-house and need recent graduates to help set up and run the technology. By contrast, large companies have existing AI teams and have started cutting entry-level headcount, with Block cutting 40% of its workforce in February 2026 while citing AI as the reason.

How many new US jobs do small businesses actually create?

Cuban cited the figure of about 60% of new jobs each year. US Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that between the third quarter of 2020 and the third quarter of 2025, companies with fewer than 250 employees accounted for 51% of net job creation in the country.

Is the entry-level job market shrinking because of AI?

Postings for entry-level US jobs have dropped 35% over the last 18 months, in large part pinned on AI by research firm Revelio Labs. The drop is concentrated in routine tasks like data entry, customer support, and junior coding work. Some large firms are still hiring, with IT services firm Cognizant saying it hired 25,000 fresh graduates in 2025 and plans to exceed that in 2026.

What AI skills should new graduates learn for small business jobs?

Cuban has pointed to implementation as the work small businesses need help with. “Learn all you can about AI, but learn more about how to implement [it] in companies,” he said on the TBPN podcast. A new grad with two years of using AI for research, writing, coding, and analysis has skills a 20-person local shop cannot build in-house, and the value starts on day one.