A new nonprofit aimed at preparing American workers for disruption from artificial intelligence launched Thursday with backing from Amazon $AMZN, Anthropic, Microsoft $MSFT, OpenAI, and more than two dozen other companies and philanthropies. The group, RAISE US, said it has commitments from companies and philanthropic groups totaling more than $500 million, with the organization targeting $1 billion in total funding over multiple years.
Former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will serve as the new group's CEO, with former Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb serving as co-chair. The organization is launching with initial state partnerships in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland, and Utah.
"America has a technology strategy for leading the global AI competition. It does not yet have a people strategy — and we cannot lead without one," Raimondo said in a statement.
The organization's work spans state-level policy reform, an employer coalition built around co-designing training pathways, expanded AI-enabled learning tools, and a philanthropically financed policy lab insulated from corporate influence, where new ideas can be incubated and eventually handed off to governments to carry out. Rather than tracking how many people sign up for programs, the organization says its benchmark for progress will be whether participants actually secure and sustain employment.
Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and the OpenAI Foundation are designated anchor partners. Bank of America $BAC is serving as the primary corporate sponsor of an advanced manufacturing apprenticeship initiative. Additional backers include ADP, AMD $AMD, Blackstone, Cisco $CSCO, Deloitte, Eli Lilly $LLY, General Motors $GM, IBM $IBM, Mastercard $MA, ServiceNow $NOW, UPS, Workday $WDAY, and several philanthropic foundations.
"AI is going to reshape how nearly every job works, and this is exactly the kind of effort we need to make sure American workers have the skills for what's next," Amazon President and CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement.
Programs are already taking shape in the initial partner states. In Arkansas, RAISE US is supporting an AI-powered career navigation platform called Arkansas LAUNCH. Maryland's partnership centers on broadening a service-year program that channels participants toward fields facing worker shortages, such as healthcare, and separately an entrepreneurship accelerator designed for workers whose jobs have been displaced, according to The Wall Street Journal. Among the policy tools under consideration is a wage insurance model, which would allow workers who accept lower-paying positions after a job loss to keep drawing some benefits rather than exiting the workforce altogether.
The launch arrives as white-collar hiring has contracted for more than two years, a stretch without precedent outside of recessions, with economists debating how much AI is contributing to the slowdown and whether the jobs it eventually creates will offset those it eliminates.