Goldman Sachs launches a Small Business AI Institute within a new $500 million commitment

Anthropic, Google, Meta and OpenAI will contribute training and tools through an expansion of the bank's established entrepreneur programme.

Goldman Sachs has launched a Small Business AI Institute as part of a new $500 million commitment to expand its 10,000 Small Businesses programme. The 22 October announcement brings Anthropic, Google, Meta and OpenAI into an initiative focused on practical AI adoption by entrepreneurs across the United States.

The commitment supports education, access to capital and business services for another 10,000 companies. It is a programme-level investment, rather than a promise that each participant will receive a fixed cash grant.

Training built around existing businesses

The institute has three stated pillars: AI education, research into small-business use of AI, and support for AI-enabled improvements in access to capital.

Its first activities combine several delivery routes. Anthropic will help develop an applied-AI learning series, workshops for programme alumni and research collaborations. Google will provide its AI Professional certificate to almost 20,000 owners and employees, including three months of no-cost Google AI Pro access.

Meta will contribute tools and training through Muse for Small Business. OpenAI will work with the programme's community-college partners on tailored workshops across the country.

That mixture connects general skills with places where owners already receive business support. A workshop can start with the company's actual operations—customer enquiries, scheduling, marketing or financial administration—rather than treating AI as an isolated technical subject.

Adoption is broader than integration

Goldman Sachs also released a survey of more than 2,400 graduates from its existing programme. In that sample, 86% reported using AI in their business, compared with 56% in 2024. Only 15% said AI was fully integrated into core operations, and more than three-quarters wanted additional training and resources.

Those figures describe programme graduates, not every small business in the country. Within that group, however, they show a useful distinction between trying a tool and building it into recurring work.

An owner might already use a model to draft a social post while still doing the underlying product selection, approval and publishing manually. A more integrated process connects the task with the information, people and applications needed to finish it repeatedly. The training challenge is to help owners make that transition where it is useful to their business.

A programme with an existing delivery network

Goldman Sachs says nearly 20,000 entrepreneurs have completed 10,000 Small Businesses since its 2010 launch. The new institute extends that established network rather than beginning with a standalone online course.

For a business owner, the practical attraction is the combination of education and operational support. Learning how to ask a model a question is only one part of adoption. Choosing a suitable process, preparing the company information and deciding how staff will use the result can require a different kind of assistance.

The multi-provider structure also offers exposure to more than one tool ecosystem. That can help participants compare approaches according to their actual work instead of assuming that a single product is the answer to every task.

The October launch therefore frames AI adoption as a business-development effort. Its initial training partnerships and existing education network provide the delivery route; the new commitment funds the broader programme. The next concrete outcomes will come from the courses, workshops and company workflows that participants put into use.

Sources

- [Goldman Sachs Commits $500 Million to Launch Small Business AI Institute and Expand 10,000 Small Businesses](https://www.goldmansachs.com/pressroom/press-releases/2026/goldman-sachs-commits-500-million-to-launch-small-business-ai-institute) — Goldman Sachs