Mark Cuban has advice for new grads: aim for small businesses.
In a post Wednesday, the billionaire investor and former “Shark Tank” star said new graduates should seek employment at small and medium-sized companies because that’s where they can add the most value.
Cuban said the new graduates can teach SMBs “how to use agents to optimize processes that they might not be able to take the time or afford to do manually.”
“Large companies don’t need new graduates for this,” he said. “Entrepreneurial companies will love the value you add.”
He said job seekers should be aware that AI agents are where new grads can add “immediate value in ways businesses didn’t know they needed.”
AI agents are virtual assistants that can perform tasks autonomously, from start to finish, without requiring prompts from the user.
Companies have doubled their number of AI agents this year. A study of more than 400 companies by software engineering management service Jellyfish said that adoption of agentic AI in these companies had increased from 50% in December 2024 to 82% in May.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in January: “The the era of agentic AI is here”, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, compared AI agents to junior employees.
Morgan Stanley said in a November note that it expects AI sales agents to add $115 billion to the U.S. e-commerce industry by 2030.
Cuban’s comments come at a difficult time for new graduates, who are entering a market with a low number of vacancies.
California employment company Handshake reported in May that job offers on its platform were down 15% compared to the previous year and the number of applications per post increased by 30%.
Handshake said that of all the full-time job applications she received from new graduates, more than a third were to companies with 250 employees or fewer.
And small businesses are also trying to attract Gen Z graduates with something they value: the ability to work from home. Workplace researchers told Business Insider in July that these companies offer flexible work arrangements to compete with larger companies for top talent.