Helping small businesses put AI to work

OpenAI announced a partnership with America’s SBDC, the national network supporting 1 million entrepreneurs annually, to expand AI training for small businesses. The initiative will train around 150 SBDC advisors through OpenAI Academy’s Community Trainer Program, with plans to reach at least 1,000 small businesses via in-person workshops and one-on-one advising. The goal is to equip owners with skills to apply AI tools responsibly and assess their impact on operations.

The collaboration includes hands-on Academy Workshops modeled on OpenAI Academy’s three-hour format, where owners will test ChatGPT on real business tasks and leave with actionable plans. SBDC advisors will follow up to address questions and track progress. Additionally, practical guides for industries such as marketing, operations, and manufacturing will be co-developed to reflect workshop insights and business needs.

A new report, Small Businesses, Bigger Capabilities, highlights AI usage among small businesses, noting that in one September week, approximately 4 million employees at firms with fewer than 500 people used OpenAI’s tools. Nearly one in five of those users worked at businesses with fewer than 10 employees. The report also found that agentic output tokens for products like ChatGPT Work and Codex accounted for two-thirds of small business output tokens in August, up from one-third in April 2026.

The report examines how small businesses leverage AI for tasks like finance, supply chain, legal compliance, and marketing—areas where small teams often lack dedicated specialists. Examples include restaurants comparing menu prices, a meal-planning app founder modeling pricing, and a tour company using AI to compete with larger competitors. The partnership builds on OpenAI’s prior initiatives, including Small Business AI Jams and the ChatGPT for small business program introduced in July 2026.