How One Nonprofit Is Reskilling American Workers for the AI Era

A new bipartisan nonprofit called RAISE US has launched with more than $500 million to help American workers move into AI-era jobs instead of being pushed out of them, according to reporting from Fast Company. The group, co-led by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, is starting in four states and working with employers like Amazon and Microsoft to turn the threat of automation into a path toward higher paying work. At Metaintro, we track how reskilling programs actually reach everyday workers, and this is one of the largest privately funded efforts yet. Here is how it works, who it serves, and how you can find similar help even if you do not live in a pilot state.

What Is RAISE US and Why Was It Created?

RAISE US is a nonprofit built to help the country capture the economic upside of artificial intelligence without leaving its workforce behind. As Fast Company reported, the group launched with more than $500 million already committed and a stated goal of reaching $1 billion. That scale matters, because most reskilling promises stay stuck at the level of a press release. A half billion dollars in real money changes what is possible, from career navigation software to paid training years for young people entering the workforce.

The organization is deliberately bipartisan. It is co-led by Gina Raimondo, the former U.S. Commerce Secretary and a Democrat, and Eric Holcomb, the former Governor of Indiana and a Republican. The design choice is practical rather than political. Workforce programs that swing with each election tend to collapse before they can prove anything, so the founders structured RAISE US to survive changes in who holds office. The nonprofit wants to use individual states as testing grounds for ideas that could later be adopted more widely, which lets it move faster than a single national program and learn what genuinely helps workers keep or improve their jobs. For readers, the takeaway is simple. A serious, well funded group now treats your ability to adapt to AI as a problem worth solving, and it is putting money behind connecting education directly to real hiring. That is a meaningful shift from the usual story, in which employer training budgets fail to translate into actual jobs.

How Does RAISE US Actually Reskill Workers?

The core idea is to connect schools, training providers and employers so tightly that a layoff can be met with a genuine offer of a new, better paying role rather than a dead end. Instead of teaching skills in a vacuum, RAISE US wants training to map directly onto jobs that companies are actively hiring for. That is the difference between a certificate that sits on a shelf and one that opens a door, and it is the same gap we see when most workers cannot connect their AI training to their actual work.

The early programs show what that looks like in practice. In Arkansas, the group is helping build an AI powered career navigation platform, sometimes described as a LAUNCH tool, that steers people toward openings and the specific training those openings require. In Maryland, RAISE US is supporting a paid service year for recent high school graduates, aimed at healthcare and other fields facing worker shortages, so young people can earn while they build in demand skills. The nonprofit is also funding an independent policy lab, backed by charitable foundations rather than its corporate sponsors, so that research on what works stays separate from any one company's interests. Taken together, these efforts try to fix the thing workers complain about most. Training that leads nowhere. By tying every program to a real hiring pipeline, RAISE US is betting that reskilling only counts when it ends in a paycheck. This is the same logic behind why nearly half of CEOs now plan to retrain workers for AI rather than simply cut them.

Which States and Companies Are Involved?

RAISE US is beginning with four pilot states, chosen to represent different regions and economies. Those states are Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland and Utah. Starting small and local is intentional. It lets the group prove out programs, measure whether workers actually land better jobs, and fix what does not work before scaling nationally. If the pilots succeed, the model is meant to spread, and the founders hope successful ideas can eventually inform broader policy.

The employer list is where the effort gets its weight. Anchor partners include Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, the OpenAI Foundation, and Bank of America. Additional companies involved span industries far beyond tech, including UPS, General Motors, Eli Lilly, Mastercard, chipmaker AMD, Cisco and IBM. That breadth is the point. When a logistics giant, a carmaker, a drugmaker, a payments network and several AI labs all sign on to the same reskilling effort, it signals that the AI skills shift is not confined to Silicon Valley. It reaches warehouses, factory floors, labs and back offices. For a worker, this list is a rough map of where AI era hiring is heading, and it echoes other large private commitments like Google's push to train hundreds of thousands of skilled trades workers and Meta's workforce academy tied to data center jobs.

Why Are Employers Betting on Reskilling Instead of Layoffs?

The simplest answer is that replacing experienced people is expensive and slow, while retraining them can be faster and cheaper than it looks. Companies that lay off a workforce and try to rehire for AI era roles often discover the talent they need is scarce and costly. The ones that keep their people and retrain them can move quickly, because those workers already understand the business. As one workforce voice quoted in the coverage put it, the companies that re-skill their staff find that AI simply accelerates whatever capability they already have.

The clearest example comes from IKEA. When the retailer rolled out an AI chatbot that handled a large share of customer questions, it did not cut its call center staff. Instead, it looked at what the bot could not do and found that customers still wanted human advice on how furniture would actually work in their homes. IKEA retrained roughly 8,500 call center workers as remote interior design advisers, and that redesigned channel now generates around 1.3 billion euros in annual revenue. The lesson employers are drawing is that automation and human work can complement each other when a company invests in the transition. Lacey Kaelani, CEO of Metaintro, told Fortune that "In combination with layoffs over the recent years plus the rise of required AI skills, experience is no longer enough." That skills gap is exactly why HR leaders are betting on worker training instead of treating every AI rollout as a reason to cut headcount.

What Does the Data Say About the AI Skills Shift?

The numbers explain why an effort this large is happening now. Coverage of RAISE US noted that U.S. job postings requiring AI skills grew about 144% year over year as of April 2026, a sign that employers are rapidly rewriting what they expect from applicants. At the same time, only around 38% of employers said they were reinvesting their AI productivity gains into upskilling and reskilling, which leaves a large gap between how fast the demands are changing and how much help workers are actually getting.

The broader research points the same direction. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that employers expect 39% of workers' core skills to change by 2030, and that 63% of employers already name the skills gap as the single biggest barrier to transforming their business. Roughly 77% of employers said they plan to upskill their workforce in response. The same body of work projects that the churn will create new opportunities as well, with the Forum estimating 78 million net new jobs by 2030 even as older roles fade. For workers, the message inside these figures is not panic but preparation. The demand for AI capable people is climbing fast, the support has not kept pace, and the people who close that gap for themselves stand to gain. It is worth remembering that this is a skills mismatch, not a job apocalypse, and mismatches can be fixed.

What Does This Mean for Your Career?

For most workers, RAISE US will not knock on your door directly, especially if you live outside the four pilot states. What it does is validate a strategy you can start using today. The winners in this shift are not the people with the most AI proof job titles. They are the people who learn to use the tools and can show it. That reframes your task from hiding out in a supposedly safe role to actively demonstrating that you can work alongside AI and get more done because of it.

Practically, that means treating reskilling as an ongoing habit rather than a one time event. Workers who use AI in their day to day work are already earning more than peers who do not, because they turn the technology into visible output. It also means making your new skills legible to employers, since a credential only helps if a hiring manager can connect it to the job. Learning how to show AI fluency on your resume can matter as much as the training itself. If you are further along in your career, do not assume this shift favors only the young. Experienced workers who add AI skills often gain an edge that combines judgment with new tools, a pairing that is hard to replace. The overall move is to stay adaptable, keep learning, and build the kind of career that bends with change instead of breaking, which is the heart of staying valuable as AI reshapes your job.

How Can You Access Reskilling Help Right Now?

You do not have to wait for a nonprofit to reach your state to start reskilling, because much of the same infrastructure already exists. Community colleges are often the most overlooked option. They offer short, affordable certificate programs in data skills, healthcare support roles, cybersecurity and other AI adjacent fields, and many are built in partnership with local employers who hire directly from the classes. Because these programs are designed around regional hiring needs, they tend to lead to real openings, which is the same connection RAISE US is trying to formalize through employer and educator partnerships.

Registered apprenticeships are another strong path, and they carry a major advantage. You earn a wage while you train. The federal government maintains a public directory of these programs, and the U.S. Department of Labor has been expanding apprenticeship options aimed at AI era work. Beyond that, check whether your current employer already offers tuition assistance or internal training, since many of the same companies backing RAISE US run their own academies and reimbursement programs that go unused simply because workers do not ask. Free and low cost online courses can build foundational AI literacy, and a growing number of AI certifications can boost both your salary and your career growth. The common thread is initiative. The help is increasingly out there, but you generally have to reach for it. Start with one program that maps to a job you can actually see being posted, rather than collecting credentials for their own sake.

What Should You Watch Out For With AI Reskilling?

Reskilling is powerful, but it is not a magic word, and it is worth being clear eyed about the limits. The first trap is training that leads nowhere. A certificate only helps if employers in your area are hiring for the skill it certifies, which is exactly why RAISE US ties its programs to real openings. Before you invest time or money, look at whether local job postings actually ask for the skill, so you are chasing demand rather than a trend. Programs that cannot point to where their graduates get hired deserve a healthy dose of skepticism.

The second thing to watch is the gap between corporate promises and follow through. Large reskilling pledges make headlines, but the research shows employer training often fails to reach the workers who need it most, and even IKEA, held up as a model, made some layoffs of its own. That does not mean these efforts are hollow, but it does mean you should treat any single program as one tool rather than a guarantee. Keep ownership of your own career rather than waiting for an employer or a nonprofit to manage it for you. Diversify how you build skills, mix formal training with on the job practice, and keep an eye on where hiring is actually growing. RAISE US and efforts like it can widen the on ramp, but the person who has to decide to take it, and to keep adapting after the first course ends, is still you. Approached that way, the wave of AI reskilling investment becomes an opportunity rather than a promise you are left waiting on.

Related Articles

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• Why Nearly Half of CEOs Plan to Retrain Workers for AI in 2026
• Why HR Leaders Are Betting on Worker Training in 2026
• The DOL AI Readiness Course and America AI Ready
• Google's $50 Million Skilled Trades Training for 300,000 Workers
• Meta's $115 Million Workforce Academy and Data Center Jobs
• Career Skills to Stay Employable as AI Reshapes Work
• AI Is a Workforce Skills Mismatch, Not a Job Apocalypse
• WIOA Expansion and DOL Workforce Training in 2026
• Employer and Educator Partnerships Building Career Pathways
• Older Workers Have an AI Upskilling Edge in 2026
• Resume Skills AI Cannot Replace in 2026

People Also Asked

Q: What is RAISE US and who runs it?

A: RAISE US is a bipartisan nonprofit that launched with more than $500 million to reskill American workers for AI era jobs, with a goal of reaching $1 billion. It is co-led by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, and it is backed by anchor employers including Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, the OpenAI Foundation and Bank of America.

Q: Which states does RAISE US start in?

A: The nonprofit is beginning with four pilot states, Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland and Utah. It plans to test programs like an AI powered career navigation tool in Arkansas and a paid service year for recent graduates in Maryland, then scale the ideas that prove they help workers land better jobs.

Q: How can I reskill for AI if RAISE US is not in my state?

A: You can access similar help through community colleges, registered apprenticeships that pay you while you train, employer tuition assistance, and reputable online certifications. The U.S. Department of Labor's apprenticeship programs and local college certificates are often built around real hiring needs, so start with training that maps to jobs you can see being posted near you.

Future-proof your career before the next wave of AI hits your industry. At Metaintro, we surface the reskilling programs, hiring trends and career moves that keep you ahead of automation instead of chasing it. Sign up free to get matched with roles and skills that actually count in the AI economy.