Former US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has founded a nonpartisan organisation called Raise Us to prepare American workers for an AI-driven economy. The group aims to raise $1 billion for retraining and continuing education programmes. Half that amount has already been secured.
Big tech is backing the effort. Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI are all supporters, which raises obvious questions about independence since these companies stand to gain the most from widespread AI adoption.
A bipartisan launch with a billion-dollar target
Raimondo and former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb have launched Raise Us, a bipartisan nonprofit backed by more than two dozen major corporations and four governors. The organisation aims to raise $1 billion to prepare American workers for an AI-driven economy. Raimondo will serve as CEO. For perspective, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta plan to spend a combined $725 billion on AI this year alone.
“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 at the launch. “If we build the best AI systems in the world and leave millions of Americans behind, we won’t have won anything; we’ll have automated our own decline.”
The organisation plans to create new corporate incentives for retraining and retention, launch pilot programmes with governors, and adapt training models to match shifting employer needs. Success will be measured by whether workers land and keep stable, well-paying jobs.
Rivals fund a workforce initiative for the first time
What stands out about Raise Us is who’s paying for it. According to the announcement, Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and the OpenAI Foundation are all backing the initiative. Raimondo says it’s the first time leading AI developers have jointly funded an independent initiative to support workforce transitions. Bank of America is the lead sponsor, funding an apprenticeship programme for advanced manufacturing.
Other backers include ADP, AMD, Autodesk, Blackstone, Cisco, Cognizant, Deloitte, Eli Lilly, General Motors, IBM, Mastercard, ServiceNow, UPS, and Workday. On the philanthropic side: the Rockefeller Foundation, Arnold Ventures, the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, and the Stephen A. Schwarzman Foundation. Raise Us aims to collect $1 billion in multi-year pledges. The New York Times reports that $500 million is already locked in.
The funding structure raises obvious questions about independence. Many of the companies involved profit directly from the rapid spread of AI or are actively pushing it forward. Raise Us is supposed to develop solutions for potential AI-driven job losses, but it’s largely bankrolled by the very companies causing that disruption.
Pilot projects launch in four states
Raise Us is starting with partnerships in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland, and Utah. The selection is deliberately bipartisan, with Governors Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Republican, Arkansas) and Spencer Cox (Republican, Utah) alongside Ned Lamont (Democrat, Connecticut) and Wes Moore (Democrat, Maryland).
The pilot programmes focus on easing job transitions by helping people figure out which roles will still be in demand, what skills those jobs require, and how to move into them. In Arkansas, Raise Us is supporting an AI-powered career navigation platform called Arkansas LAUNCH, which connects students and job seekers with personalised learning paths and employer-linked career tracks.
In Maryland, The New York Times reports, the state’s Service Year programme for recent high school graduates will expand into sectors facing labour shortages like healthcare. The organisation also plans a competitive fund for innovative career transition models there, plus an accelerator programme to help displaced workers start their own businesses.
In other states, Raise Us hopes to offer “wage insurance” for workers who take lower-paying jobs rather than dropping out of the workforce entirely, according to The New York Times.
Four pillars define the organisation’s work
Raise Us is organised into four areas. “State Partnerships” aim to align state education and workforce programmes more closely with employer demand through apprenticeships and short-term credentials, for example. Public funding would increasingly depend on whether participants actually find jobs, not just enrolment numbers.
The “Employer Coalition” brings together companies using AI to jointly develop pilot programmes for retraining and retention. Microsoft has already tested one model, according to the NYT: the company trains entry-level legal staff across departments and teaches them AI skills so they can shift into new roles more easily as technology changes. “You can think of doing that with almost any job we have,” said Microsoft Vice Chair Brad Smith.
“Education and Training” aims to scale AI-powered training models that combine hands-on work experience with credentials and offer cheaper alternatives to traditional college. The “Policy Lab” will develop and test new policy approaches. It’s explicitly not funded by corporate money.
Retraining remains the hard part
Retraining displaced workers has a mixed track record in the US. Raimondo herself called past efforts “ineffective,” according to the NYT. Congress has steadily cut funding for its main workforce development law since it passed in 1973. Planned overhauls have gone nowhere.
Whether Raise Us delivers better results than earlier retraining programmes remains to be seen. But the initiative arrives at a moment when the US is pouring money into AI infrastructure and models but still has no solid answer for how workers are supposed to get through the structural changes ahead.
There’s also a more basic question: how fast and how deeply AI will actually reshape the workforce. While AI can speed up specific tasks, research on broader productivity gains remains inconclusive. There’s no clear evidence yet that AI is boosting the overall economy in ways that would trigger large-scale job losses.
