OpenAI and America’s SBDC launch small-business AI training pilot
OpenAI has announced a partnership with America’s SBDC to train roughly 150 Small Business Development Center advisors and provide hands-on AI training to at least 1,000 small businesses. The initial pilot will use OpenAI Academy’s Community Trainer Program and bring workshops to participating SBDC networks across the United States.
America’s SBDC is a national network of small business development centers that serves 1 million entrepreneurs annually. OpenAI and the network plan to extend the pilot beyond classroom sessions through one-to-one advising and jointly developed resources for business owners.
Training tied to day-to-day business work
America’s SBDC plans to select advisors for an OpenAI Academy training and credentialing pathway focused on applying AI in small businesses. The programme is intended to help advisors guide owners towards a useful starting point, responsible use of AI and an assessment of whether a tool is helping the business.
Advisors and staff will also have a separate facilitator pathway and workshop module. Participating networks are expected to host at least one Academy Workshop each. These three-hour, hands-on sessions are designed to let owners build and test ChatGPT uses on real business tasks, leave with an implementation plan, and receive follow-up support from SBDC advisors.
The partners will create practical AI guides, including an industry-focused companion guide, for distribution through OpenAI Academy and America’s SBDC channels. Potential areas include marketing, operations, manufacturing, exporting and government contracting. The materials will be shaped by findings from workshops and advisory work.
Usage data points to agentic tools
Alongside the partnership, OpenAI published Small Businesses, Bigger Capabilities, a report on how small teams use its products. It says approximately 4 million employees at companies with fewer than 500 people used OpenAI tools in the week of September 9–15. Nearly one in five of those users worked at businesses with fewer than 10 employees.
OpenAI also reports that agentic output tokens from products including ChatGPT Work and Codex represented two-thirds of all small-business output tokens in August, compared with one-third in April 2026. The practical relevance of ChatGPT Work task-oriented AI capabilities lies in its description of task-oriented AI capabilities that can support work beyond a conventional chat response.
In the report sample, finance and accounting, supply chain, legal and compliance, and marketing each made up at least three times as large a share of interactions with AI agents among small-business users as among users at larger businesses. OpenAI presents these as functions where small teams may need assistance without a dedicated specialist.
Examples from owners
Ted and Tami Taylor, who operate three restaurants in New Mexico, used ChatGPT Work to compare competitors’ menu prices before updating their own. They said the analysis helped them avoid increases that could have made items uncompetitive, and that they otherwise would have skipped the comparison.
Teri Moten used ChatGPT Work to research school districts in South Texas and prepare tailored outreach that she reviewed before sending. She reported securing a paid training session within ten days of beginning that outreach.
For business leaders, the pilot’s practical implication is to identify a concrete task, test an AI workflow with human review, and evaluate its usefulness before expanding it into more sensitive or consequential operations.