OpenAI to Give Hands-On AI Training to at Least 1,000 US Small Businesses
In a partnership with America's SBDC, roughly 150 advisers will be trained first. OpenAI says that inside small companies, a growing share of AI output now comes from systems that carry out tasks on their own.
OpenAI is teaming up with America’s SBDC, the US network of Small Business Development Centers, to train small businesses on AI. The company announced the partnership on September 30. The plan is to train advisers first, then help small businesses put AI to work through local, on-the-ground sessions. Alongside the announcement, OpenAI published a report titled “Small Businesses, Bigger Capabilities,” which looks at how small teams are using AI in their day-to-day work.
How the training will work
The initial plan starts with training roughly 150 advisers. From there, the goal is to reach at least 1,000 small businesses through in-person instruction.
Each participating SBDC network will hold at least one hands-on workshop. There will also be advisory support and practical guidance materials for small business owners. The approach pairs the trained advisers with region-by-region practice sessions, so that business owners can apply AI directly to their own operations.
What small companies are using AI for
The examples OpenAI highlighted range from price comparison to product development. Small businesses used ChatGPT Work for comparing prices, finding customers, and running the company. The report also includes cases of Codex being used for product development and for building software features. This announcement is focused on taking that kind of real-world usage and extending it through training and local support.
According to the report, during the week of September 9-15, roughly 4 million employees at small companies worldwide used OpenAI tools. Among users at companies with fewer than 500 employees, about one-fifth worked at companies with fewer than 10 employees.
OpenAI also said the nature of that usage has shifted. When AI output inside small businesses is measured in tokens, the small chunks of text that models work in, a larger share is now produced by AI that handles tasks on its own, known as agents. That share rose from about one-third in April 2026 to about two-thirds in August.
Where the biggest differences showed up
In the report’s sample, small companies and large ones also diverged in how they used the tools. Four areas, finance and accounting, supply chain, legal and compliance, and marketing, accounted for a bigger slice of activity on the small business side. OpenAI said that in conversations with agents, the share taken up by each of those four areas was at least three times as large among small business users as among users at large companies.
What to watch from here is how close the adviser training and workshops get to that target of 1,000 businesses.