- Booking.com has teamed up with OpenAI to offer training within Europe
- Six countries will get free in-person training, virtual sessions and OpenAI Academy lessons
- OpenAI also wants to boost EU research into youth safety and wellbeing, and support its governments
OpenAI has teamed up with Booking.com to launch a new scheme designed to help 20,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Europe to adopt and use AI tools in their company operations.
The new co-developed program is set to provide free practical training to demonstrate some of AI’s use cases and its productivity, efficiency and competitiveness benefits.
It will be partly available through the relatively new OpenAI Academy similar to US upskilling efforts, but there will also be in-person workshops and virtual sessions to reinforce learning.
From launch, the ‘SME AI Accelerator’ program will be available in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Ireland and the UK.
The companies explained the new program comes in response to relatively low AI uptake among SMEs – while 55% of larger enterprises used AI in 2025 per Eurostat data cited in the announcement, only 17% of SMEs did. Given that SMBs account for 99% of all of Europe’s businesses, there’s huge scope for more training and deployment.
Still, European AI usage impresses on a global scale, with the UE using 17% more advanced thinking capabilities than the global average.
“AI is accelerating change across every industry, creating transformational opportunities for growth and innovation for businesses of all sizes,” Booking.com Chief Business Officer James Waters wrote. “Building a strong, successful AI ecosystem in Europe is vital to unlocking these opportunities.”
Dates, locations and the actual organizations set to support local delivery are set to be announced in the coming months.
The Europe-specific SME AI Accelerator forms part of a broader EU Economic Blueprint 2.0 plan, which also sets out plans to support research into youth safety and wellbeing and provide governments with access to OpenAI for Europe.
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