Gusto unveiled Cofounder, an AI assistant that targets small business owners. The company made this announcement through a blog post. The new product is a natural extension of Gusto’s tools aimed at reducing administrative burdens and assisting business owners with increasing operational demands. Being different from the generic AI tools, Cofounder is created from the ground up to have instant access to business-related data so that it can help right away without the long setup or manual input of data.
The new solution draws context from Gusto’s platform and customer-approved connected applications, giving it visibility into employee information, payroll schedules, benefits programs, compliance requirements, and other key business operations. This enables the AI assistant to perform tasks and deliver recommendations based on real-time organizational data.
The launch comes amid continued growth in entrepreneurship across the United States. According to Gusto, new business formation remains strong, while AI adoption among entrepreneurs is accelerating. The company’s recent research found that a majority of new business owners used AI during the startup process, with many reporting significant time and cost savings.
Also Read: Hyland Unveils New AI Innovations to Accelerate the Rise of the Agentic Enterprise
“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’s objective is to automate repetitive yet important activities, which include payroll processing, compliance tracking, expense approval, reminder for filling up timesheets, and workforce scheduling coordination. The users will be able to communicate with the assistant in a humanlike way using web chat, Slack messaging, or even SMS communication to get reports or initiate workflows or alerts when necessary.
In addition to the above, the system supports more than 20 predefined automation workflows related to common business processes, like employee onboarding, payroll management, and compliance. The integration options for Google Workspace, Slack, and Notion are available within the application.
Combining automation with human oversight controls will allow the company to reduce the amount of time that the business owner spends on managing their company.