Well, hello America. How is everyone today? All right. This is a good-looking group here. Very exciting. I'm honored to be with you, Dina, the great Dina Powell, to talk about the golden age of small business, and that means entrepreneurship. And I know we have a lot of entrepreneurs out in the audience. But I particularly want to call out one entrepreneur which is really symbolic of this moment. Joe Gebbia, congratulations. I mean, this is one of... Yeah, it's such a great example of this is someone who started out as a small businessman who had a vision, and this is what happens when you bring the best of the private sector to Washington. This is the power of what's possible, and it's playing out right now. And of course, it could only happen in the Trump administration. So I couldn't be more proud to call Joe a colleague, and more honored to be here with you, Dina.
I would say one of the things that President Trump always reminds me is, Kelly, small business is really big business. When you add it all up, it's huge. And it's absolutely true. I mean, we know that small businesses, they're characterized by grit and ingenuity and innovation, but they're also our nation's number one source of job creation. So they're a powerful economic engine. And Dina, you spent years in the private sector, as have I, and then a few years in government, too. So what have you seen in your tenure across all of those sectors? How has technology become a powerful force behind small business?
Well, thank you. First of all, it's an honor to be with you. I was just saying to the administrator, she has done more in a short period of time than any previous administrator. More small businesses have been started under her watch. More loans have gone out the door. I mean, it is really impressive. And we at Meta, we have 3.6 billion people every day use one of our platforms, 200 million small business owners. And just in the last six months, more people on the platform have started businesses than in the 20 years before. So I know that a large part of that is your leadership and commitment.
I can take no credit. I will tell you this administration is squarely focused on Main Street. And you're exactly right. We have record all-time business formation in America. Over half a million new business starts every single month this year for the first time in history. And I would say that's why we also have record all-time employment. So it goes hand in hand.
We really are seeing that too. And when you talk about technology, I mean, someone that understood this early on is Joe Gebbia.
I mean, just think about Airbnb and the concept of it, and frankly, how to make it secure, how to make it reach millions and millions of people around the world. But he did start off as a small business, and he always had—I remember along the way, I've known Joe many years—he kind of had that entrepreneurial spirit, but also the care of a small business owner to care about every single client, every single customer, every single review. And that's, I think, what we see in the small business owners that we work with.
We're particularly excited to be here today with the administrator because today Meta is launching Meta Muse for Small Business, and it is building on this really successful product called Muse, which is the number one app that everyone is downloading. It's right now number one in the App Store. Michael Grimes, our banker, was the first to download it, of course. But we really are excited for Meta. Muse for Small Business is a very different AI model. Instead of just asking it questions, Muse is working for you. It's working for you constantly. So the small business owners that are using Muse are literally not worried about the back office stuff as much as they had been, and taking that time to build and grow their business for the future.
I'll give you some examples of what small business owners are doing on Muse. Every single morning, Muse looks at your inventory and your cash flow, and it actually sends small businesses an email or a post that says, 'Do you need to reorder these three products? I can order them for you if you give me permission, and I'll let your customers know they're back in stock.' Just remarkable things every single day.
I see Governor Landry and Sharon Landry here from the great state of Louisiana. Some of our best examples have been Louisiana small businesses, and particularly actually in Richland Parish. They actually participated in the testing of Muse, and we're seeing farmers use it so that they can actually get hour-by-hour weather alerts so that they can think about how to manage their crops. So we love saying Muse is hustling and working for you all day long while you're pursuing your passion.
Well, that's incredibly powerful, and I'm glad you brought up agriculture because this is, you know, we've always had technology in agriculture from precision agriculture when you're in the dirt in the field, but farmers aren't just in the field plowing the earth as they harvest right now in real time, but then they've got to go do the books and deal with all the inventory of diesel, of fertilizer, seed corn, and then marketing the grain. I mean, it's going to be incredibly powerful for every type of sector. What are some of the fastest-growing areas that you see on your platforms?
Sure. You know, it's funny that you mentioned farming because I think a lot of us kind of think about, you know, is farming growing and are they using technology at all? One of the small businesses that has been part of this working group is a Bethany Beach farm. It's, I think literally, I think their family started it in 1870. They grow peaches and pears, and in fact, their marketing is 'Take a peach to the beach,' and they're one of the most successful businesses in the area.
And Henry Bugget, who runs it, was telling me that what he's using the technology for now is just so different because he has to actually figure out what are the best seeds, to your point, what are the best commodity prices because he's buying a lot of different things. And so again, Muse every morning goes out and basically prices every single thing that he needs to invest in the farm, and it brings him the cheapest places to buy it.
Wow, that's powerful. I grew up on what is now a five-generation family farm, so I know all the inputs and data points that go into it is going to be very powerful. But let's talk about another sector that is really benefiting from super intelligence just real quick. And I want to get back to Muse in a second because first of all, well, I'll just start there and say I've started several small businesses. I bought and sold them, won and lost at them. But I will tell you, had there been an agentic option, and you think about harmonizing the assets that are available, you put your Slack and all the different software applications, Salesforce and everything, it just would have been a force multiplier. I can't even—or even having a tool like Canva instead of PowerPoint at that time. I mean, it's like so powerful.
Well, we're so excited because we just launched Muse for Small Business, and we already have so many product partners—Canva, Quicken, Shopify—and so we're bringing all of that in one product together. And so the small business owners that are using Muse for Small Business kind of have one-stop shopping to fully integrate the full technology stack.
Mark Zuckerberg, our CEO, used it even just this week with a lot of things. A really funny thing that he used it for is he bakes with his three-year-old daughter. And so he put into it, 'What's the best bakery of this area?' Found that small business, and then actually put in, 'What are three things I can bake with a three-year-old, and can you buy everything for me?' I mean, it's just been so interesting to see the use cases both of Muse and Muse for Small Business. He's not a very good baker, but his wife says...
But I think the three-year-old was great. So that's...
She's probably better than him yet.
Well, another promising sector that I see super intelligence applied in is manufacturing. And so, Dina, you and I were talking about how AI adoption is kind of barbelled. So you've got the kind of explorers out here, and then you've got those that are getting started with it, and then, you know, kind of the continuum in the middle, manufacturing.
So, at the SBA, we've been very focused on reshoring our supply chain in America. In fact, Pete Hegseth, Secretary Hegseth, and I just signed the Small War Plants Commission agreement to make sure that we are getting capital and contracting and everything out to that small supplier in the supply chain. Now, these are the incremental buyers right now of super intelligence, and they've told me that they need to increase their tech stack, like double or triple their compute power, because the equipment, the CNC machining, the robotic welding, the laser cutting, it's already integrating super intelligence into the machine.
So it's really exciting. And guess what? Those that are using it are adding employees. They're not subtracting. They're actually growing much faster than their peers who don't use it. So I think that's where the convergence of the physical and the digital is really exciting and promising, and I think that's why we see something like 58,000 new—I'm sorry, manufacturing jobs this year, 100,000 new construction jobs.
The numbers are amazing. You know, we have been obviously doing a lot of research on American small businesses, and right now only 20% of American small businesses are using AI. But according to RAMP, the 20% that do use even limited amounts of AI increase their customer base, their market share, and dramatically increase their revenue. And so part of our hope for Muse for Small Business is to get the 80% that aren't using AI to understand what a tool it is, and what it gives you back is the most precious asset, which is many hours every day. And that is something that we're sort of trying to get that message out.
But it's interesting that you mention how many job openings you see, and a lot of these small business owners, like contractors in Louisiana that we work with who are actually building the data centers, have open jobs, and a big part of why those jobs are open is because of the need for training.
