Mark Cuban Says Most Small Businesses Are Making This One Mistake That Will Kill Them

Mark Cuban has never been shy about predicting who will fail. The billionaire entrepreneur and former Shark Tank co-host has been making the same points in numerous recent interviews about the impact AI will have on small businesses. In his mind, the new frontier of AI is a great way to get ahead financially or get left behind.

Here's the one big mistake Mark Cuban thinks small businesses are making with AI.

What Mark Cuban thinks of AI

Cuban thinks that businesses that don't use AI are setting themselves up to disappear.

"There's going to be two types of companies: those who are great at AI, and everybody else," Cuban has said. "And the 'everybody else' is going to fail because AI is such a transformative tool."

For him, the rapid development of AI tooling can have a significant business impact, enabling smaller companies to become more efficient without hiring additional employees.

The AI mistakes small businesses make

Most small business owners know AI exists. Many have heard the hype, tried a chatbot or two, and moved on. They concluded it isn't relevant to their business, or the learning curve isn't worth it. And that is exactly the problem, because those companies will get left behind. 



"If you're not using [AI] to move faster or make smarter decisions, you're behind," Cuban told Fortune. "It's not just a tool, it's leverage. If you're not using AI to move quicker and make smarter decisions, you're at a disadvantage."

Why do so many companies make this mistake?

The reason most small businesses fall into this trap is understandable. AI can seem like a big-company problem, something for large companies with armies of engineers and billion-dollar R&D budgets.

Cuban says that perception is backward. Large corporations already have IT departments full of people who can do these things without assistance. Individual AI skills don't move the needle much at a company of that size.

Small businesses are where AI creates the biggest competitive swing. Yet most of them lack the internal knowledge to act on it.

"There are millions of companies that have one, five, 10, 50, 100, 500 people that aren't going to have AI budgets, that aren't going to have AI experts," Cuban said on a TBPN episode. "Companies don't understand how to implement all that right now to get a competitive advantage."



What it looks like in practice

Cuban isn't describing some abstract future threat. He's talking about daily tasks that quietly drain time and money from small businesses right now.

"Every company has stuff that doesn't get done because it would require someone to sit with a spreadsheet for hours. Or to count things. Or to edit. Or to check receipts for accuracy," Cuban told Fortune. "These things can be done with agents and save small companies cash and improve productivity and competitiveness."

A competitor who automates those tasks isn't just saving a few hours a week. They're freeing up capacity to focus on customers, strategy, and growth while the business that skipped AI stays buried in the weeds.

That's the compounding problem with waiting. Every month a small business delays is another month a competitor moves faster with fewer people and lower costs.

What Cuban says to do instead

Experimenting with free tools, learning prompt engineering, and practicing the customization of AI models for specific business tasks are all things Cuban suggests business owners do sooner rather than later. The goal isn't to become a software engineer. It's to get comfortable enough with the tools to actually use them.

More than theoretical knowledge, he says, the focus should be on practical implementation. "Learn all you can about AI, but learn more on how to implement them in companies," Cuban said on a TBPN episode. "Learn to customize a model, walk into a company, show the benefits."

For business owners, that means identifying a specific task AI could handle today, rather than drafting a comprehensive AI strategy. Cuban has compared this moment to the early days of the internet. The businesses that won didn't need to understand how it worked. They just needed to be willing to use it.

"Small companies have to compete differently, and they don't have the resources to just have a huge IT department," Cuban told CNBC. "Just like we saw with the early days of the internet, you hired young kids who were more comfortable with it, who learned it already and could come in and implement new things."

That means workers at smaller companies who learn to use these new tools effectively can make a drastic impact on performance, productivity, and ultimately profits.

Bottom line

Small businesses that treat AI as something to figure out later are betting their competitors will wait too long. Cuban warns that the window to act before rivals pull ahead is closing. The one move that changes the math for a company is starting somewhere specific, not planning a strategy, but picking one task and automating it this week.

Cuban has compared this moment to the early 1980s, when he was in his 20s, walking into companies that had never seen a PC. "[They were saying] 'Well, son, I got this receptionist right there ... I'm never going to need that stuff ever,'" he said to CNBC.

Those businesses lost ground to the ones that adapted. Cuban sees the same split happening now, and he's made clear which side he expects to survive. If you're looking to grow your wealth, helping your company improve via AI automation is critical right now before the competition beats you to it.

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