Government-Backed Program Seeks 1,500 Applicants To Build AI Businesses Across Australia
SMB Tech reports on the government-backed Pathfinder program's push to sign up 1,500 applicants to build AI businesses.
By Nick Ross · First published by SMB Tech. Republished with permission.
The Small to Medium Enterprise Centre of AI (SMEC AI) has opened applications for the fifth cohort of its AI Pathfinder program, with a target of more than 1,500 applicants for the free, eight-week course.
Pathfinder is delivered under the Australian Government’s AI Adopt program and is designed to help Australians build and launch AI products that address real business problems. It is delivered online and is open to people already working in an industry or running a business, not only to existing technology founders.
The program targets what SMEC AI describes as the layer of the AI economy where Australia captures value but currently has limited support: people who build products on top of AI, rather than the infrastructure underneath it.
The gap in Australia’s AI economy
Managing Director of SMEC AI, Andrew Lai (pictured), explained that the program exists to answer a question the national conversation has largely overlooked.
“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 remarked.
“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.”
Four previous cohorts have produced 502 graduates. Applications for the fifth cohort close on 16 October 2026, with the program set to begin on 21 October and conclude with a showcase in December.
An economic imperative
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 among the least likely to have those skills in-house. That gap between the economic opportunity and on-the-ground capability is central to the case SMEC AI makes for Pathfinder.
“Most AI programs either teach theory or sell tools,” Lai added. “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.”
What participants do
Across the eight weeks, 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 Head of Programs, Amir Nissen, and Lai.
The structure is built around practical execution rather than classroom instruction, with participants expected to test their ideas against real market conditions throughout the course.
From self-taught developer to connected founder
The founder of aXai, Annette Andersen, 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,” Andersen recalled. “It was the sort of stuff that you won’t get in a university course.”
Rethinking the problem
Biplab Das Choudhury runs Valueztech, a Melbourne firm building AI products for asset-intensive industries such as utilities, gas and water. He joined 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,” Das Choudhury noted. “The Pathfinder program helped us think about what a customer problem looks like, and looks at it from the customer’s lens.”
How to apply
Applications are open now and close on 16 October 2026. The cohort begins on 21 October and runs for eight weeks. Further details and case studies are available at smecai.au.