Main Street Meets Machine: How AI Is Scaling Across America's SMB Sector

About this session

Real estate is not often the first industry that comes to mind when AI leaders think about scaled deployment, but it should be. With more than two million licensed agents and brokers in the United States, nearly all operating as small/medium business owners, real estate represents one of the largest and most diverse testbeds for AI adoption at the SMB level anywhere in the economy. As AI matures beyond enterprise use, the next wave of transformation will unfold on Mainstreet. This panel examines what happens when AI tools built for enterprise budgets meet SMB reality: limited IT support, no dedicated data teams, and owners that wear every hat. Panelists will share what is working today, from AI-assisted client communication and automated valuation to workflow automation and compliance, and where the gap between the hype and reality remains wide. The conversation surfaces lessons beyond real estate that are applicable to any SMB. It reframes the 33 million small businesses in America as AI's next major growth market, one that requires a fundamentally different product playbook than enterprise. Attendees will leave with concrete use cases, honest benchmarks, and a clearer picture of what it actually takes to build and deploy AI outside the Fortune 500.