Business
The 6 Most Profitable AI Businesses to Start in 2026
Inside Martell Ventures, I’ve built and scaled multiple AI companies, and today I’ll break down the 6 I’d start from zero. You’ll see why the data says these markets are exploding, how much they cost to start, and how much they can make.
What’s the most profitable AI business you can start before 2026? As someone who’s built several multi-million dollar AI companies inside of Martel Ventures, I’m going to break down the six AI businesses I’d personally start if I was building from scratch in 2026. I’ll even prove to you how real market data and expert projections show why these industries are set to explode in 2026. And I won’t just tell you what they are, I’ll show you how much it costs to start and how easy they are to learn.
I’ll also break down how much income potential each one of these businesses have so you can pick the best one for you. Now this isn’t some get-rich-quick AI hype, these are real data-backed opportunities that you can start today. They’re growing fast and they’re only getting bigger, so let’s get into it.
Number six, AI-powered virtual assistant business. The reason why a virtual assistant business using AI is the most valuable is because all rich people need more time. Helping them get out of their email, scheduling, small tasks, running errands, research project, automation in general, using the virtual assistant angle which is a large category is a smart way to make a lot of money.
The cost is low to start because you essentially can use ChatGPT or Gemini or even an app like Fixer to teach it to you. The effort to start is low, there’s no special skill or setup or certifications needed, and then the income potential is pretty cool. If you manage four or five clients, people today are charging and making 10 to 20k a month helping these companies or these people get their time back.
Now before we go any further, I want you to know there’s two key boxes that I always check to make sure the opportunity is good right now, but even more importantly, it’s still going to be good long term. The first one is the buyer. Is the person that I’m selling to a high income buyer? See, we want to sell the people who will part with their money easier.
To make money, you want to solve rich people problems. The second is, is the market growing? Choosing the right market is more than half the battle. You want to find one that’s growing, not dying.
So let’s break it down for the AI virtual assistant opportunity. The buyer. Does it check off? They’re a busy business owner and they’re creators.
These are people who value time over money. Second one is their growth. According to studies, the VA market will pass $30 billion per year by 2030.
It’s growing 20% each freaking year. So that box is checked for sure. If you’re an entrepreneur watching this, here’s something I can tell you from experience.
You shouldn’t be sorting emails, booking calls, answering questions that someone else could have handled for you. You need to focus on what actually grows your business. That’s why getting an assistant isn’t a luxury.
It’s a freaking necessity. I spent years refining my internal executive assistant playbook and it’s the exact same system I use for my team and I give to clients I coach. It breaks down exactly what they should be doing to buy back 20, 25, 30 hours a week of your time.
And I want to give it to you for free. So just scan the QR code on the screen or just click the link in the description below and I’ll send you over a copy right now. Doing simple admin work for busy people, that’s a great start for a business.
But what if you’d rather build a business that lets you flex your creative side while printing cash in 2026? Number five, an AI content repurposing service. This one’s cool. You essentially can use AI to turn long video clips, podcasts into short clips on TikTok, carousel posts, Instagram posts, YouTube posts.
There’s so many other publishing platforms that most business owners are only using like one or two at max when there’s literally 17. So they’ll pay you to take the existing content they’ve already produced to publish it everywhere else in their voice and their design style and their content structure. See, everyone in 2026 is going to need more content, but editing that content, it takes way too freaking long.
Using AI can make it 10 times faster and you can be the person making the money. If you’re a creative person and you love to design, you love to edit, you love to live on this world of YouTube or TikTok, imagine getting paid to be there. If you got paid to do the thing you do when you procrastinate, that is the perfect job.
And I know a lot of people that would make a killing in this opportunity, but aren’t even aware of it. So the cost, the cool part is it’s relatively low. It just requires finding some customers.
You can use a lot of these free open tools. A lot of my friends are using like opusclips.com or descript.com. They all have free plans so you can start off with those. The effort to build the business, it’s medium.
There are tools, they’re easy to learn if you have a creative background, cool, but you may need to acquire the taste side of it to kind of direct them to make the outputs feel really good, especially if your client has like this discerning like, this is our brand guideline and it has to be perfect. You’re going to have to learn how to make the tools output match to your customers. And then the income potential is actually pretty cool because it’s a lot higher.
I know people that are making $10,000 to $30,000 a month with only five to seven monthly clients based on the rates from AI editing agencies today in the market. The ceiling here is a lot higher. One person can make real money if you start this business.
Most people don’t realize this, but I only spend three hours a week creating content. This video, my Instagram, all my TikTok, everything, three hours. The way I do it is we actually, as a team, use a combination of a bunch of tools that captures like my calls and my conversations, my internal trainings, and then repurposes that into the newsletter that I write, the carousel posts.
It’s literally taking what I’m already doing and then creating content with it. Most of your clients think creating content’s hard until you show them this process and use these tools, and then they’re going to be thankful that you showed up in their life. So we always check two things.
First off, the buyer. The truth is content creators, coaches, people that are using education-based marketing, they have money because they have a business. So the buyer’s there.
And the other side, growth. Well, according to Goldman Sachs, the creator economy is actually going to jump to 480 billion. So it’s already big, and it is going to get bigger.
And if you get on that wave, you’re going to get to ride it. So it checks the two boxes. And for you creatives out there, this is the opportunity for you.
Editing videos for creators, it’s super fun, and it’s a great way to make a bunch of money in 2026. But if you want to work with the companies that have the bigger budgets and have big problems to solve, that’s where the next one comes in. Number four, AI implementation and automation agency.
Helping a business automate their workflows, save them time, generate leads, essentially use anything that is a business process and automate it with AI is the next level of opportunity. Every kid that comes up to me and they’re like, I want to start a business, I don’t know what to start. AI automation company, AI automation agency, AI automation.
Why? You could go give a university $100,000, $200,000, $300,000, or you could go find clients that need you to implement what I’m going to teach you so that you can get paid to learn by helping them and then make your life future-proof by understanding the skills that are going to make you most relevant for the future. And what people forget is all these big companies built their businesses before AI was even birthed. So they’re going to need someone just like you to help them understand how to use it, where to use it, the best practices, the best tools, and they don’t have the time to keep on top of it.
So they’re going to pay you to come in and be the expert. So let’s break it down. We’ve got costs.
The truth is it’s medium, okay? Because you’re going to need to pay for some tools that might be a little bit more advanced to set things up and to help these customers. The effort is medium, okay? Because depending on the complexity of the automations you’re going to build for some of these companies, you might have to use AI to teach you how to set it up. But the cool part is, as long as you give it the information the customer gave you, the tools they’re using, and what you want to automate, AI will tell you how to set it up.
I know it sounds so fantastical and so impossible, but go try it for yourself. Say I have this data from my HubSpot CRM. I’m trying to automate it with this calendar plugin tool.
Write me the code using Zapier that’s going to connect those two tools together and watch the AI do it for you. It’s crazy what’s possible. And maybe it’s a little bit harder to get into than the other two opportunities, but because of that, the income potential, because you’re solving bigger problems for bigger companies, is between 20 and 50k a month.
I have a ton of friends that are getting paid that or more to automate the business processes of these companies, and then they find customers on platforms like Upwork and Make.com. So for example, one of our products at Martell Ventures is called YourAtlas.com. It’s a voice AI automation tool that either takes phone calls or makes phone calls and sells clients into booked demos. So basically you have companies that need to automate these calls that are coming in. You have this tool called Atlas that can do that for them, and you become the person in the middle, the connector that gets paid to connect those together.
And you can have dozens of clients that pay you to set it up and every month to maintain it so that it keeps making money for their business. That is a huge category. Everybody wants to automate their business processes, and most bottlenecks happen over the phone.
So just go check out YourAtlas.com to see how it works for yourself. You can fill in the information, it’ll call you, and then you can become somebody who sets that up for other local businesses. So again, we always check the market potential.
Buyers, small or mid-sized businesses that want AI but don’t know where to start, they’ve got deep pockets. The market size, the second one growth, the hyper-automation market which includes AI-driven business automation is projected to hit $249 billion by 2032. That’s insane.
What if you got 0.01% of that? Could you live off that? Could you have a fun time with that? Yes. Double down on it. Now, helping businesses automate their work, that’s great.
But what if you could land clients that pay big money so they can make more money? This next one could very well have unlimited potential. Number three, the AI lead generation agency. Essentially, you’re using AI to find potential leads, to message those leads, to turn them into opportunities.
Businesses will pay for that. Why? They’re essentially trading dollars for more dollars. If I said, hey, give me a dollar and I’ll give you back $10, how many times would you trade that $1 with me? As many dollars as you can get your hands on.
That’s what the opportunity is. If you use AI to help the business find new customers, you can actually get a massive amount of leverage because AI can do the research, it could identify, it could qualify, it could do the outreach. It could even automate the setup of the meetings for the company sales reps.
You just get paid for the leads you find. So let’s go through it. The cost is actually low because all you need is tools like clay.com, apollo.io, or even chadgpt.
The effort is kind of like medium to maybe on the high level because you’re going to need to understand marketing, best practices, copywriting, conversion setups, and you’re going to also need to know how to set up the automations using AI. But the income potential, it’s wild. I literally have friends making between $30,000 and $80,000 every month, not even hard because companies are always willing to pay more to get services that brings them revenue.
If you can build a top AI lead gen agency, you will be making that kind of income, no problem. So again, we always have to verify two things. One, the buyer.
Are service-based businesses willing to pay for leads? They already do. Just go look at who’s running ads. That’s the easiest way to find customers.
If they’re spending money to generate ads on Google, Facebook, et cetera, then they’ve got a budget for this. The second one is growth. Well, sources say that the lead generation industry is growing around 17% a year because AI tools are exploding.
So it may not be growing as much as others, but that market is like a kabillion dollars because marketing services and generating leads is the lifeblood of every business. Now selling automation and outreach, that’s one thing. But what if you could protect those same businesses from losing millions overnight? That’s what’s next.
Number two, manage cybersecurity and a thing called MDR or managed detection and response. I know this sounds nerdy, but stay with me for a second. Essentially what you can do is you can offer 24 seven cybersecurity monitoring and threat response powered by AI with deep fakes.
Grandma, it’s me, Billy. I’m in jail and I need to get bailed out. Please send cash now.
Nope, I’m fake. And cloning voices and all these things where these social engineers are hacking companies to get inside their systems more every day, bigger companies will pay top dollar to make sure that they feel protected and secured. Now this isn’t for everybody, but with the risk, with the focus, with this attention, I’m going to break it down.
You make a lot more money. I don’t know if you know this, but hackers are using AI too. So most businesses can’t even keep up because the hackers are using AI to attack them.
So they need somebody like you to come in and be their AI person around security. Now the cost is high because you’re going to have to pay for some very specialized security tools. And those can be a little pricey to start.
And the effort is high because you’ll have to learn some cybersecurity basics before taking on clients. But again, if you’re more technically oriented, you like to nerd out, you’re not as creative like some of the other opportunities, this is the one for you. The cool part is your income potential can be between 40 and 80K a month based on just a few clients.
When I look at like other companies that charge for what’s called MDR retainers and the response fees charged by those managed service providers, they pay top dollar to feel protected at night. Every week I have a friend saying, some person spoofed my voice and then called a new team member because they noticed on LinkedIn, the person just joined the team and said that they need to go down or get this information or send them an email with this bank account information. Like the hacking is nonstop.
It’s not only just trying to attack the systems, it’s literally social engineering. And with all the generative voice, the generative video, and the ability to create scenarios that are just not real, companies are struggling. That’s why I tell all my entrepreneurial friends to do this.
If you do nothing from this video, then add this to your personal life and your professional life. It’ll change the game. Make a secret code word that your family members have to use if anybody’s calling for money or calling to do something or pick somebody up.
Same thing for at work. Have a secret code word that everybody on your team knows. So if there’s a request that involves money, they have to know that code word.
This just exemplifies how much there’s a need for cyber security and somebody like you to help the companies just even understand how to set these things up and keep it simple. It’s not hard for you to become the expert in this world because nobody’s talking about these things. So we always check the two things.
Number one, is there a buyer for this? Oh my gosh, is there. Companies that handle private data or payments, they need somebody that protects them from getting hacked. Especially the bigger ones that are holding customer information and that information getting leaked could have a major impact on their personal reputation.
The real money made is not and not getting hacked is your customers feeling like you did the things to keep their information secure. That’s where growth comes from. And then the second part is, is it a growing industry? Well, the global cybersecurity market is projected to reach 500.70 billion by 2030.
Definitely a market you can attack. And for what it’s worth, if you’re the kind of person that can speak on camera and you can educate the market, you will be one of the few people doing this and you will get all the clients. And I know this one doesn’t sound as fun as the other opportunities and might feel a little bit more technical, less creative, but I’m telling you, sometimes the boring businesses is where the billions are made.
So here’s the deal. Cybersecurity is a beast of a business, real money, real tech. But what if you could work with even bigger companies, the kind that can’t afford to get up? Then you’ll love this last one.
Number one, responsible AI governance and compliance services. Now this one sounds like the government. I know that this is like big words, but in essence, if you think about all these businesses using AI on top of their customers’ data, using AI in workflows, the laws involved, the potential liabilities, the exposure, they can’t keep up on it.
And the ones that have this problem are the big companies. And you know what big companies have? Deep pockets. When they make decisions about people’s health, people’s security, people’s privacy, these are not light things.
And they need an expert that can come in and show them the best practices. The cost of getting into this is medium, okay? You do need to have some level of understanding of how to set it up. The effort is high because there’s a steeper learning curve, especially if you’ve never done this before.
You are going to have to study the AI and data privacy laws, but it’s not unapproachable. If you’re the kind of person that’s addicted to news, get into this business. Your job is literally to understand how all these data privacy laws are changing and shifting the governance.
And you then get paid to bring that best practice to these big companies that for gosh forbid, they don’t want to find out that their team built some technology that essentially is causing them potentially to be exposed to a massive lawsuit. Speaking of news, did you know there’s new laws like the EU AI Act that means companies must prove their AI is trustworthy? So think about it. Industries where the government says every business must do something, then the service providers come in and they can’t say no because they have to do it.
If you’re the person that’s ranked high, recommended, referred by other people, you will crush in this industry. And that’s where the income potential can be between 50 and 100K for the same amount of clients because they’re bigger clients paying more in their fees and standard consulting rates in these risk and compliant firms, they’re just larger because they’re already used to paying this for other kinds of audits. I know even across my companies, when I pick AI tools, I’m always thinking about the sensitive information they’re being provided and I only stick with big players.
There’s a lot of startups that launch every day and I don’t use those tools because I can’t have my internal email financial data shared in a startup that has no governance, no process. So I’m looking at the Googles and the Salesforce of the world so I can feel comfortable. If you can come in and help these startups understand their rules, their structure so that they can go and be SOC compliant, that’s what it’s called, to some of these bigger customers, you help them make more money because they can sell to bigger companies their technology.
Now with that, we always go back to market potential. So one, are there buyers? Think hospitals, think tech firms, think massive safety budgets. Yes, there are buyers and they can spend the money if you can deliver the goods.
Number two is their growth. AI compliant spending will reach billions, billions by 2026 as these new laws roll out around the world. So these growing markets combined with massive budgets equals incredible opportunity for you.
And as I mentioned earlier, the best part about this buyer, it’s a non-negotiable. They have to spend the money. It’s just a decision.
Are they going to give it to you or somebody else? Each of these ideas can make serious money in 2026. And the best part is they all work because they combine three things. One, AI leverage.
Two, real demand. And three, buyers who can actually pay. Now I know oftentimes on YouTube, you’ll find people talking about these really simple, easy side hustles.
That’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking to the person that’s like, look, AI is the future. I want to do this.
This isn’t a side hustle for you. This is a real business you want to start. If you’re willing to dedicate the time, a thousand days, I know it sounds like a long time, but it’s not.
And you decide to become great at something and you go all in on this and use AI to teach you and you find those early customers and you charge them and you keep finding new customers and you build your team and you show up every freaking day to want to make this happen, here’s what I know. You’ll make it happen. You’ll be the person in your family that separates you from everybody else.
And remember, doing this is going to get you really busy. And one of the best way to get your time back is to have an executive assistant. So if you want my playbook, just scan the QR code on the screen, or just click the link in the description below, and I’ll send you over a copy right now.
It’s my gift to you to help you get the time back so you can focus on this. Now, if you want to learn how to build AI systems that actually achieve your goals, click here and I’ll see you on the other side.
