OpenAI announced a partnership with America’s SBDC on September 30, 2026, to expand AI training and direct support for small businesses in the United States. The initial phase is expected to train around 150 advisors, with a goal of reaching at least 1,000 businesses through in-person, hands-on sessions.
What stands out is not simply making tools available to more people. The program focuses on instructors, exercises based on real work and post-training support. For businesses with small teams, these factors may determine whether AI becomes a useful tool or remains limited to a few experiments.
How will the new program support businesses?
According to the partnership announcement from OpenAI and America’s SBDC, the program draws on SBDC’s network of local business advisors and OpenAI Academy’s community instructor training program.
The initial plan has three parts:
Advisor training: America’s SBDC plans to select advisors for a training and certification pathway focused on applying AI in small businesses.
Hands-on workshops: Sessions are designed around OpenAI Academy’s three-hour, hands-on format, helping business owners try ChatGPT on real tasks and develop an implementation plan.
Needs-based resources: The two organizations plan to develop practical guides and industry-specific resources based on observations from workshops and advisory activities.
Potential topics include marketing, operations, manufacturing, exporting and government contracting. After the workshops, advisors will continue helping business owners answer questions and assess which uses are delivering benefits.
This is a planned rollout in the United States. The announcement does not confirm a similar program for Vietnamese businesses, nor does it provide evaluation results from this pilot.
Why is training more important than simply providing accounts?
An AI account does not solve operational problems on its own. A shop owner may receive an advertising draft very quickly, but still needs to know which content is accurate, what data to provide and who is responsible before it is published.
The gap between “knowing how to ask AI” and “integrating AI into a workflow” lies in those decisions. Work-based training helps users identify:
Which tasks are suitable for AI assistance.
What input information needs to be prepared.
Which criteria to use when checking results.
When to turn to someone with relevant expertise.
For example, using AI to organize customer feedback is different from assigning it to decide refund policies. The first task can help with summarizing information; the second requires an authorized person to weigh the rules and specific circumstances.
For beginners, how to get started using AI at work provides a useful foundation. What the SBDC model adds is an advisor who stays involved throughout the experimentation process, rather than leaving businesses to resolve every issue on their own after the session.
What needs does the accompanying report reveal?
Alongside the partnership announcement, OpenAI introduced the report Small Businesses, Bigger Capabilities. According to figures released by the company, around 4 million employees at companies with fewer than 500 people used OpenAI tools during the week of September 9–15, 2026. Nearly one-fifth of these users worked at businesses with fewer than 10 employees.
Those figures need to be read within their proper scope: they are OpenAI product usage data, not a survey representative of all small businesses. User numbers alone also do not demonstrate gains in productivity or profit.
The report describes a need for support in areas such as finance, accounting, supply chains, legal matters, compliance and marketing. What these have in common is that small businesses must handle them even without dedicated specialists.
The announcement gives the example of two restaurant owners in New Mexico using AI to compare competitors’ menu prices before adjusting their own. Another business owner used AI to research school districts and prepare customer outreach content to review personally before sending. These are reported experiences, not a promise that other businesses will achieve similar results.
What can Vietnamese businesses learn from this model?
The applicable lesson is not about waiting for a specific program, but about how to organize internal training: center it on real tasks and measure results after implementation.
Choose a small workflow for practice
A session can begin with standardizing product descriptions or drafting answers to frequently asked questions. Inputs should be clear enough, outputs easy to check and errors correctable before they affect customers.
Do not start with tax decisions, legal advice or automated payment approvals. AI can help prepare information, but it does not replace professional responsibility.
Learn how to verify, not just how to write prompts
Instructors should ask participants to compare drafts against source documents, flag unverified information and distinguish facts from suggestions. When using customer or financial data, check access permissions, data-processing terms and whether the data is necessary before entering it into the tool.
This is also why skills that remain valuable as work changes, such as evaluating information and making decisions, need to accompany AI skills.
Include time spent correcting errors in the evaluation
After a trial period, businesses should compare completion time, the amount of editing required and how well the results meet requirements. If drafting is faster but verification takes a long time, the actual benefits may fall short of expectations.
Tool selection should come after needs have been identified. The article comparing ChatGPT and Claude by task can help with this step, but it does not replace testing within the business’s own workflows.
Conclusion
The partnership between OpenAI and America’s SBDC offers a model worth watching: AI training combined with local advisors, hands-on practice and follow-up support. The program’s effectiveness still needs to be evaluated after implementation. For small businesses, the practical message is that sustainable AI use requires investment in working methods and verification skills, not just tools.
Frequently asked questions
Can Vietnamese businesses join the OpenAI and America’s SBDC program?
The announcement describes a program delivered through the SBDC network in the United States and does not yet confirm a way for Vietnamese businesses to participate. Do not assume that this plan includes direct support in Vietnam.
Do you need to know how to code before learning to use AI in a business?
Not necessarily for tasks such as drafting, summarizing documents or standardizing content. Integrating AI with sales systems, managing data permissions or automating multistep processes may require someone with technical expertise.
What should you prepare before a hands-on AI training session?
Choose a specific task, prepare sample data with sensitive information removed and clearly define the output criteria. A previously approved piece of work is also useful for comparing the quality of the results.
How can you tell whether AI training is effective?
Track a workflow before and after training using consistent criteria: total processing time, time spent correcting errors, output quality and employees’ ability to carry out the work independently. Tool usage frequency is only an indicator of activity, not enough to establish business effectiveness.
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