Grab and OpenAI Are Teaching 30,000 Partners Practical AI Skills

OpenAI and Grab launched GO Forward with AI on 23 September 2026, a programme that will train 30,000 of Grab's driver, delivery and merchant partners across Southeast Asia in practical AI skills over the next two years, starting in Singapore and reaching Malaysia in 2027.

What did Grab and OpenAI announce?

The programme runs half day, in person workshops based on the OpenAI Academy curriculum, adapted for each country. It starts in Singapore, expands to Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines later this year, then reaches Malaysia and Vietnam in 2027. Grab will also train its own GrabAcademy trainers so the sessions keep running after OpenAI's team moves on. It builds on Grab's existing Driver AI Assistant, which has already reached close to 500,000 drivers since 2024.

Grab and OpenAI share a common ambition to ensure the benefits of AI are more accessible and meaningful for the communities we serve. This programme is about building that confidence, whether it's helping a merchant make smarter business decisions or giving a driver-partner the tools to explore a new business idea.from Ong Chin Yin, Chief Organisational Capability Officer, Grab (OpenAI, 23 September 2026)

What can the training actually teach a small operator?

According to a Grab survey cited in the 23 September 2026 announcement, half of its driver and delivery partners in Singapore already use AI tools, and 87 percent of the ones who do not said they were open to trying. ChatGPT was the tool they knew best. In the workshops, drivers use it to test a side business idea, and merchants use ChatGPT Work to turn sales data into a dashboard, draft a simple website or plan an expansion, then review what it produces before deciding what to do with it.

Does this matter if you are not a Grab partner?

Yes, even though Grab's formal rollout is still a year or more away. The tools it teaches, ChatGPT for planning and Claude for turning that plan into a working document or spreadsheet, are already available to any business today. The lesson from Grab's survey is not the technology, it is the habit: reviewing what the AI produces instead of trusting it blindly, and starting with one clear, recurring task rather than trying to overhaul everything at once. A hawker stall owner in Penampang and a driver-partner in Singapore are solving the same problem, working out what to sell more of and when, and both can use the same free tool to do it.

Also today

• GO Forward with AI builds directly on OpenAI for Singapore, the more than S$300 million partnership OpenAI signed with Singapore's government in May 2026 to grow the country's AI talent and adoption (OpenAI, 19 May 2026).
• Grab's own survey of its Singapore driver and delivery partners found ChatGPT was the AI tool they knew best, ahead of any other assistant, before this training programme even began (OpenAI, 23 September 2026).

What to do this week

Pick one task Grab's own partners are already using AI for, planning a promotion, drafting a simple site or turning a spreadsheet of sales into a chart, and try it with ChatGPT or Claude before the end of the week. Do not wait for a company wide rollout to reach your business; the same tools Grab's drivers use are already on your phone. If you want a structured way to build that habit with your team rather than figuring it out alone, our AI Full-Stack Building for Business programme walks business owners through exactly this, turning a real business task into a working dashboard or simple website using Claude, step by step.