As AI raises the stakes for scale, independent businesses face an ownership choice

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As AI raises the value of scale, independent businesses weigh outside investment against shared ownership models that preserve control.

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Artificial intelligence is raising a question for independent businesses about how much size matters to their future. Across countries with available data, the OECD reported that 52% of large firms used AI in 2025, compared with 17.4% of small firms. That difference measures adoption, rather than success, but it highlights an uneven starting point as businesses explore the technology.

The resources behind those decisions deserve attention. In its 2025 analysis of smaller businesses, the OECD identifies connectivity, data, computing resources, skills, and finance as important conditions for adoption. Access to an application is only part of the challenge. Businesses also need the capacity to choose suitable systems and put them to work.

Investment strategies are beginning to connect that capacity with ownership. Reuters reported last year that venture-backed Crete Professionals Alliance planned to acquire accounting firms and equip them with AI tools. Its approach involved buying majority stakes while allowing local practices to retain minority ownership. The example illustrates how technology investment can accompany a transfer of control.

Shared ownership provides another structure to consider. The International Cooperative Alliance sets out a model in which members jointly own an enterprise, participate in its decisions, and determine how its surplus is allocated. Applied to common business needs, that structure creates a way to consider technological scale alongside the interests of those using it.

Howard Brodsky, founder of CCA Global Partners, argues that shared ownership can help independent businesses build the scale needed to compete in an AI-driven economy.

For Howard Brodsky, founder of CCA Global Partners, the relationship between scale and control is central to the AI debate. Drawing on his work helping independent businesses collaborate through shared ownership, he believes the larger issue is who will own the capabilities that make businesses competitive, and who will receive the value those capabilities create.

“AI has the ability to do amazing things, but you need a level of sophistication to understand how to implement it and how to use it,” Brodsky says. He sees a risk that this expertise will accumulate within organizations already positioned to finance it, leaving smaller owners with fewer practical choices.

His concern extends to private equity roll-ups, in which investors bring multiple businesses under a larger ownership structure. Brodsky argues that combining their operations with common technology and AI would strengthen the resulting group’s position against businesses that remain independent. His emphasis is on the ownership implications of that scale, rather than a prediction that every acquisition will produce the same outcome.

Brodsky sees shared ownership as another way to organize comparable capabilities. Independent businesses can jointly support technical teams and infrastructure while keeping ownership of their individual companies. In his view, that would allow a network to develop expertise once and make it available across participating businesses, reducing the need for each owner to assemble the same resources separately.

“Shared ownership can bring numerous family businesses together to create scale in areas such as buying, marketing, and, increasingly, technology,” he says. His argument is that the businesses using those resources should have a stake in the structure that provides them.

Brodsky points to driver-owned platforms as an illustration of that possibility. Business Insider reported last year on The Drivers Cooperative in New York, where drivers participate in a collectively owned transportation platform. The example demonstrates an ownership arrangement for shared technology, rather than evidence of AI performance or parity with larger services. Brodsky sees its relevance in bringing individual operators together around infrastructure they use for their livelihoods.

For family businesses, he believes this changes the discussion about preparing for AI. The decision includes how to organize investment, how to share expertise, and how much control owners want to retain as their needs grow. Shared ownership, in his view, deserves consideration as part of that business planning.

Brodsky’s broader argument is that technological progress should leave independent owners with meaningful options. As AI develops, he believes collective scale will help them remain participants in the decisions shaping their future. The question is who controls the shared capabilities businesses depend on, and whether the value they generate continues to reach the people who built those businesses.

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