Grab and OpenAI bring practical AI skills to Southeast Asia
OpenAI and Grab have launched GO Forward with AI, a regional training programme designed to help 30,000 driver, delivery, and merchant partners across Southeast Asia build practical artificial intelligence skills. The two-year initiative begins in Singapore before expanding to Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines later this year, and to Malaysia and Vietnam by 2027. The programme builds on previous collaborations between OpenAI and Grab, including a Driver AI Assistant powered by OpenAI models that has reached nearly 500,000 drivers.
The Core Development
Across Southeast Asia, merchants make daily decisions about sales, stock and promotions. Some people who work in the gig economy are exploring business ideas of their own. AI can help people work through these questions, but finding useful ways to apply it takes practice.
That’s why we’re launching GO Forward with AI today with Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading superapp. Over the next two years, the programme will help 30,000 of Grab’s driver-, delivery-, and merchant-partners across Southeast Asia build skills they can use in their work and businesses. It begins in Singapore and will expand to Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines later this year, followed by Malaysia and Vietnam in 2027.
The collaboration brings together our mission to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity and Grab’s commitment to expanding economic opportunity across Southeast Asia. It’s also part of OpenAI for Singapore , our work with local partners here to help more people and businesses here put AI to use.
Deployment & Availability
As someone who is always keen to pick up new skills and opportunities, AI helps me to explore new ideas and make more informed decisions everyday. The workshops took me from idea to execution, and I’ve been exploring new ways to support our family hawker business, while building projects that could help me generate alternative streams of income. I’m excited to keep learning and building up my ideas.
Strategic Perspective & Ecosystem Impact
Many Grab partners are already interested in AI. In a Grab survey of its driver-partners in Singapore, half of Grab’s driver and delivery partners said they use AI tools. Among those who do not, 87% said they were open to trying them. ChatGPT was the tool they knew best. Many of them indicated they wanted to grow an existing business or explore starting one.
We’ve designed GO Forward with AI around the decisions many of them face. A driver or delivery partner could use ChatGPT to explore a business idea, think through what would make it stand out and make a plan to get started. A merchant could use it to look for patterns in sales, plan promotions or prepare for changes in demand.
In hands-on workshops, participants will also try ChatGPT Work on larger tasks, such as turning sales data into a dashboard, building a simple website or developing an expansion plan. They’ll review what it produces and make the decisions that follow.
Why it matters
This partnership highlights the growing push by major AI developers to drive grassroots adoption and practical use cases for AI tools among everyday gig-economy workers and merchants in emerging markets.