Upwork’s Strategic Embrace of AI Could Push the Stock to $25, According to Experts!

From a global labor market perspective, AI is causing a reallocation of work rather than an absolute reduction. Routine, repetitive tasks (whether in accounting, customer support, basic coding, or admin work) will increasingly be handled by AI or automation – meaning those roles will either disappear or be redefined. At the same time, new tasks emerge: training the AI, maintaining it, leveraging it in creative ways for business value. Freelancers, who often have cutting-edge skills and multiple clients, are in a great position to capitalize on these emerging needs. And companies, facing a shortage of talent in AI and data science, are tapping into the global freelance talent pool to get the expertise they lack internally. Upwork’s CEO described this as an “AI value gap” in many firms – lots of AI hype, but not enough internal capability to execute – driving them to hire freelance experts to actually realize AI projects. For example, a law firm might not know how to apply generative AI safely, so they hire an Upwork freelancer to build a custom GPT-trained on their legal documents. Or a large tech company might use freelancers to evaluate and tune the outputs of their AI models. These are real cases happening now on freelance platforms, highlighting how AI adoption in industry often relies on external help.