Verizon to invest $70 million in AI training effort

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 (Reuters) - Verizon VZ.N is investing $70 million in a nationwide effort to provide AI training to job seekers, small business and educators as the U.S. economy undergoes a dramatic transformation, it said on Wednesday.

The U.S. telecom company is partnering with major non-profit programs such as Goodwill Industries and aims to offer AI training to hundreds of thousands of people using training resources from companies including IBM IBM.N, Google GOOGL.O, Anthropic, Microsoft MSFT.O and OpenAI.

"AI will change the face of the workforce," Verizon CEO Dan Schulman said in an interview. "You have to do this in order to protect the democracy."

Schulman wants large companies to join the effort to boost funding to help workers acquire skills for specific AI-related jobs. "It's in the self-interest of all business leaders to step up," Schulman said. "If every Fortune 100 (company) put $50 million or $70 million into this, we have a multibillion-dollar fund."

Verizon announced last year that it was investing $20 million to help departing employees gain AI skills after it announced it was cutting 13,000 jobs. The new effort adds $50 million.