Amazon and Microsoft join new nonprofit’s push to help American workers navigate the AI economy

Amazon, Microsoft and other leading tech companies are joining a new nonpartisan workforce organization launched Thursday aimed at helping American workers navigate the transition to an AI-driven economy.

RAISE US aims to partner with governors, employers, and training organizations to retrain and redeploy workers displaced or affected by AI, with a goal of raising $1 billion in multi-year commitments — more than half of which has already been secured.

The organization is led by former U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who will serve as CEO, and former Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, who will serve as co-chair. The two are pitching the effort as explicitly bipartisan.

“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,” Raimondo said in a news release. “I believe AI will create new jobs and industries over time, but the transition could be disruptive, and it’s already underway.”

Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft and the OpenAI Foundation are serving as anchor partners. The coalition also includes more than two dozen companies and philanthropies, among them IBM, Cisco, General Motors, Mastercard, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Pivotal, the organization founded by Melinda French Gates. Initial state partnerships include Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland, and Utah.

The launch of RAISE US comes amid layoffs and cost-cutting across the tech industry and widespread anxiety — from workers to recent graduates — about AI’s impact on employment. Some employers, including Meta, have cited AI as a reason for cuts, including in Washington state. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy blamed massive layoffs that started last year on a culture correction at the tech giant rather than being AI-driven.

In a blog post Thursday, Amazon Chief Global Affairs & Legal Officer David Zapolsky said investment in workers must keep pace with the technology.

“The transition to an AI-driven economy will create enormous opportunity, but only if we invest now in helping workers develop the skills to seize it,” Zapolsky wrote.

Zapolsky cited Amazon’s own efforts to prepare workers for the AI economy, including its Career Choice program, which has helped more than 300,000 employees earn degrees and certificates over 14 years, and a broader $2.5 billion commitment to skills training through its Future Ready 2030 initiative.

Microsoft said it has already been piloting a model for the kind of worker transition RAISE US aims to scale — cross-training entry-level lawyers across different parts of the organization and equipping them with AI skills so they can be repositioned as technology evolves, The New York Times reported.

“It creates an opportunity to transfer people from jobs that are being eliminated to jobs that are being created,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told the Times.