Free National Program from SMEC AI Aims to Turn 1,500 Australians into AI Founders

The Small to Medium Enterprise Centre of AI (SMEC AI), an **Artificial Intelligence (AI)** Adoption Centre delivered under the Australian Government’s AI Adopt program, has opened applications for the fifth cohort of its **AI Pathfinder program**, targeting more than 1,500 applicants in what would be the largest free AI founder program run in Australia.

Pathfinder is an eight-week program that helps Australians launch AI products to market that solve real business problems. It is free, delivered online, and open to people already working in an industry or running a business, not only to existing technology founders.

The program is aimed squarely at the layer of the AI economy where Australia captures the most value and currently has the least support, namely the people who build products on top of AI, rather than the infrastructure underneath it.

Four previous cohorts have produced 502 graduates. The next cohort opens for applications now and begins on 21 October 2026.

Andrew Lai (pictured), Managing Director of SMEC AI, said the program exists to answer a question the national conversation has largely skipped.

“The Government has been clear that Australia should be a nation of makers and not just takers. There has never been a better time for Australians to build,” Lai said.

“With that said, you no longer need to be a technologist to start an AI company, you just need to have domain knowledge. Australia has hundreds of thousands of people who know a problem worth solving inside out and have never once thought of themselves as a founder. That is the gap Pathfinder was built for, and it is why we are opening it as wide as we can this time.”

The economic case is significant. Research released by EY-Parthenon in August 2026 found that artificial intelligence could lift Australia’s GDP by between $95 billion and $116 billion over the next decade and support a net gain of between 36,000 and 44,000 jobs, but only if Australian organisations have the skills to put it to work. Small and medium businesses account for more than 97 per cent of all Australian businesses and are the least likely to have those skills in-house.

“Most AI programs either teach theory or sell tools,” Lai said. “Pathfinder does neither. Over eight weeks people build something, speak to real customers, and find out whether it works. Some of them come in with an idea and leave with a business. Others find out in week three that the idea was wrong, which is also worth eight weeks of anyone’s time.”

Participants work through building a minimum viable product, applying current AI tools, validating an idea with real customers, running customer conversations, and pitching an AI startup. The program is delivered by Amir Nissen, Head of Programs, and Andrew Lai.

Annette Andersen, Founder of aXai, builds accessible technology for people with complex disabilities and came to Pathfinder as a self-taught developer working largely alone. “I normally would go into a situation like that and listen and never meet anybody, but I networked with heaps of people very fast,” she said. “It was the sort of stuff that you won’t get in a university course.”

Biplab Das Choudhury runs Valueztech, a Melbourne firm building AI products for asset-intensive industries such as utilities, gas and water. He came to Pathfinder as an engineer already running a business. “We used to think of a problem which we have faced and try to create a solution around it, but it is not always my problem, it is somebody else’s problem,” he said. “The Pathfinder program helped us think about what a customer problem looks like, and looks at it from the customer’s lens.”

Applications close 16 October 2026. The cohort begins 21 October 2026 and runs for eight weeks, concluding with a showcase in December 2026.