Helping small businesses put AI to work

Small businesses are built on ambition: a craft you’ve perfected, a skill to share, a better way to serve a community. But turning that ambition and expertise into a business also means finding customers, managing finances, and handling marketing, often with a small team and little time to spare. AI can extend a team’s capacity, but figuring out where to start takes time too. A trusted advisor can make that first step easier.

Today, OpenAI is announcing a partnership with America’s SBDC⁠(opens in a new window)—the national network of small business development centers serving 1 million entrepreneurs each year—to help more small businesses use AI at work. In this initial phase, through OpenAI Academy’s Community Trainer Program, we plan to train around 150 Small Business Development Center advisors and bring hands-on workshops to SBDC networks across the country, with the goal of reaching at least 1,000 small businesses through in-person training and many more through one-on-one advising and resources we develop together.

Alongside this new partnership, we’re also releasing Small Businesses, Bigger Capabilities, a new report⁠(opens in a new window) examining how owners and small teams are using AI to expand what they can build and accomplish. The report finds that in just one recent week, from September 9-15, around 4 million small-firm employees worldwide used OpenAI’s tools. Through the SBDC partnership, we want to help even more owners build the skills and confidence to explore what AI could make possible for their businesses.

The pilot will combine training for local advisors with opportunities for owners to learn, practice, and get ongoing help:

Our new report⁠(opens in a new window), Small Businesses, Bigger Capabilities, brings together usage data and owners’ experiences to examine how small businesses are already using OpenAI’s tools. It finds that in a recent week in September, approximately 4 million employees at companies with fewer than 500 people used our products. Nearly one in five of those users worked at a business with fewer than 10 employees. And in August, agentic output tokens for products like ChatGPT Work and Codex—the units that AI models process and generate—made up two-thirds of all small business output tokens, up from just one-third in April 2026.

The report also examines the work small businesses are turning to AI to handle. In the sample, finance and accounting, supply chain, legal and compliance, and marketing each accounted for at least three times as large a share of small-business users’ interactions with AI agents as they did for larger-business users. These are areas where a small team may need help without having a dedicated specialist on staff.

For some owners, that help makes it possible to tackle work they would otherwise have left undone. Ted and Tami Taylor, who run three restaurants in New Mexico, used ChatGPT Work to compare competitors’ menu prices before updating their own. The analysis helped them avoid price increases that would have made some items uncompetitive. Ted says they would otherwise have skipped the comparison.

Other owners are using AI to pursue new business. Teri Moten used ChatGPT Work to research school districts in South Texas and prepare tailored outreach that she reviewed and sent. She reports booking a paid training session within ten days of starting that outreach. These experiences offer concrete starting points for owners considering how AI might fit into their own work.

This partnership brings together OpenAI’s work to help owners and small teams use AI with America’s SBDC’s business expertise and trusted relationships with owners in their communities. Last November, OpenAI Academy teamed up with DoorDash, SCORE, and local business organizations for Small Business AI Jams in five U.S. cities, giving owners hands-on help with tasks such as marketing, customer communications, and everyday operations. Our ChatGPT for small business program, introduced in July 2026, adds training and resources to help owners use AI at work.

Our partnership with America’s SBDC extends that work through advisors who already support owners in their communities. Throughout the pilot, we’ll follow up with owners to understand what’s helping, what they’re still using, and where they need more support. What we learn will shape the training and resources we develop together.