Grab and OpenAI’s GO Forward with AI: What 30,000 Partners Will Learn

A driver considering a side business and a merchant planning a promotion need different kinds of help from AI. Grab and OpenAI’s GO Forward with AI programme is designed around those practical decisions, offering hands-on training to 30,000 driver-, delivery- and merchant-partners across Southeast Asia over two years.34

Where and how the programme will run

Announced on 23 September 2026, the programme runs through GrabAcademy and starts in Singapore. OpenAI says it will expand to Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines later in 2026, then to Malaysia and Vietnam in 2027. The partners’ stated target is 30,000 participants, rather than a confirmed total of more than 30,000.34

The plan calls for half-day, in-person workshops based on OpenAI Academy material and adapted to local needs. GrabAcademy trainers will also be trained to help deliver the programme more widely.13 Reporting describes the training as free and says participants in Singapore receive three months of complimentary ChatGPT Plus access after training.67

What participants can use AI to do

For drivers and delivery riders, OpenAI describes exercises in exploring a business idea, identifying what would make it distinctive and developing a launch plan. Merchants can use ChatGPT to examine sales patterns, plan promotions and prepare for changes in demand. Workshops also introduce larger tasks, including turning sales data into a dashboard, building a simple website and drafting an expansion plan; participants are expected to review the results before acting on them.13

That is a more specific promise than general AI literacy: the aim is to help partners make decisions and produce useful first drafts without having to become software developers.413 It is not, however, evidence that every workshop will teach multilingual voice-to-text, product mock-ups, packaging design or regulatory research. Those detailed activities are not established as a standard curriculum in the supplied programme announcements.3413

What it could mean for a baker leaving taxi work

Putri Aziella shows the kind of transition the programme hopes to support. After six years as a taxi driver, she planned to leave driving when her contract ended in November 2026 and devote more time to baking. She had begun selling her baked goods through TikTok and wanted a website and a more visually appealing menu.6 The programme’s website-building and business-planning exercises could help her sketch those next steps, but there is no reported result showing that the training has grown her business.613

Around 50 women drivers and delivery riders attended the first workshop.6 The available reporting establishes who was in that cohort, but not why it was selected; it would be premature to present the first group as proof of a particular gender-inclusion policy. Singapore launch remarks also pointed to participants already building side businesses, including Putri’s baking venture.9

GO Forward with AI is ultimately a bet that practical, accessible training can help platform workers and small merchants explore new opportunities and improve existing operations.34 Whether it leads to higher earnings or lasting career changes will depend on outcomes that have not yet been established.