OpenAI wants small business owners to stop treating artificial intelligence as an afterthought. The company is betting that hands-on training, not just software, will get them there.
OpenAI announced its ChatGPT for Small Business program. The initiative pairs the company’s ChatGPT Work agent with free training. The goal is to help owners put the technology to work in their day-to-day operations.
The program builds on ChatGPT Work, an agent OpenAI launched alongside its GPT-5.6 model. ChatGPT Work differs from a standard chatbot. It handles multi-step tasks and completes projects with less back-and-forth from the user.
How the program works
The program has four parts. First, hands-on virtual training runs through product-specific webinars. These sessions walk owners through ChatGPT Work use cases across accounting, marketing and ecommerce. OpenAI said the webinars will also include live demos, sample prompts and workflows attendees can apply right away.
Second, in-person training centers the effort. OpenAI’s Academy team is holding Small Business AI Academies in cities across the United States. The sessions give owners a chance to work directly with OpenAI staff. Attendees build workflows in real time instead of learning from a video or a guide.
OpenAI pointed to results from last year’s Small Business AI Jams as evidence the format works. Specifically, the company said 78% of participants built a functional AI workflow in a single day. It also said 42% of attendees saved more than five hours a week after applying what they learned.
Third, self-paced resources round out the offering. OpenAI is rolling out new getting-started guides, customer stories and short-form videos. Some guides upload directly into ChatGPT Work. That way, owners get a starting point instead of building a workflow from scratch.
Finally, the fourth part connects small businesses to a curated list of partners and prebuilt agents. Among them, OpenAI named Dropbox, Shopify, Intuit, Slack, Atlassian and Wix.
Getting the most out of AI
The push comes as OpenAI works to expand ChatGPT Work’s footprint beyond individual users. The company says it now counts 10 million users across ChatGPT Work and its coding tool Codex. The small business program is part of a broader effort. OpenAI wants to turn that growth into everyday use inside small companies.
Owners weighing whether to sign up care less about the software, though. Instead, they care about closing the gap between having access to AI and using it well. After all, a tool that sits unused doesn’t save anyone five hours a week.
That gap is a familiar theme for ASBN readers. Technology consultant Gene Marks recently told ASBN that most small businesses don’t need more AI tools. Rather, they need to connect the ones they already have to their existing data and workflows. A recent NFIB survey found only 24% of small employers currently use AI. This suggests OpenAI’s training push targets a market still in the early stages of adoption.
Business owners can register for virtual training or find an in-person AI academy through OpenAI’s sign-up form. OpenAI has not announced an end date for the program or confirmed how many cities will host academies this year.
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