Enterprise Nation and Visa Foundation unveil £1.487m AI scheme

Enterprise Nation and Visa Foundation have announced a £1.487m programme to help more than 157,000 micro and small businesses across the UK and Ireland adopt artificial intelligence, with delivery due to begin in autumn 2026.

The three-year initiative, AI for Every Business, will provide free support funded by a Visa Foundation grant. It will focus particularly on underserved entrepreneurs who face greater obstacles to using the technology, as reported by Elite Business.

What happened

The programme will combine widely available learning materials with more tailored assistance. Business owners will be offered practical videos, webinars and regional events, alongside personalised assessments and learning paths to help them identify suitable uses for AI.

A smaller group of entrepreneurs will receive more intensive help through coaching, peer learning and one-to-one mentorship. This part of the programme is intended to help owners move beyond learning about tools and put them to work within their businesses.

The support is designed around effective and secure use, rather than adoption alone. Identifying which tools are appropriate for a particular business will form part of the assistance, addressing the difficulty owners can face in deciding where to start.

The practical emphasis sits alongside wider efforts to encourage small firms to test specific applications, including calls for businesses to trial AI in tackling late payments. AI for Every Business will offer a broader route into the technology rather than concentrating on a single business function.

The background

Enterprise Nation's Tech Hub report, Digital and AI Adoption among UK SMEs: The State of Play in 2026, found that 21% of UK small businesses regularly use AI. The research covered 1,320 UK small and medium-sized businesses and was conducted in May 2026.

Trust remains a substantial obstacle. Some 46% of small business owners said they did not have sufficient confidence in AI tools to act, while 42% said they would engage with the technology only if it were entirely free. The programme's no-cost offer addresses the latter barrier, although the findings also point to a need for guidance beyond access to software.

The confidence issue is not confined to smaller firms. E.ON Next has put customer trust at the centre of its AI strategy, illustrating the importance businesses are placing on confidence in how the technology is used.

Enterprise Nation's research also identified differences between female and male decision-makers. Among women, 29% said their business had no intention of adopting AI, compared with 23% of men — a gap of six percentage points.

The difference was wider on trust. Some 51% of female decision-makers said they did not trust AI enough to use it, against 41% of male decision-makers. Separately, reported adoption stood at 17% among women-owned businesses and 20% among male-owned businesses.

Those figures underpin the initiative's emphasis on entrepreneurs facing additional barriers. However, the programme's proposed reach extends across both the UK and Ireland, while the cited survey findings relate specifically to UK businesses.

Visa Foundation's involvement builds on its existing international work supporting small and micro businesses through access to capital, education and digital skills. It has worked with more than 150 partners globally, helping to reach 12 million small businesses.

What people are saying

Polly Dhaliwal, chief operating officer at Enterprise Nation, said private-sector and philanthropic backing was needed to reach entrepreneurs with limited time and resources to investigate AI themselves. She argued that saving even a few hours each week could make a meaningful difference to a small firm's productivity, growth and resilience.

Dhaliwal said the foundation's support would enable Enterprise Nation to reach more small businesses and help them participate in the economic changes associated with AI. Her comments placed the emphasis on practical gains for owners, rather than technology adoption as an end in itself.

Rob Cameron, group country manager for the UK and Ireland at Visa, said micro and small businesses remained important to inclusive economic growth but continued to encounter obstacles when seeking resources to digitise.

He said choosing practical, trustworthy AI tools could be difficult for founders unfamiliar with the technology. In his view, the partnership would make that process easier by providing free guidance tailored to individual business needs.

The focus on matching tools to tasks also leaves a role for human judgement, an issue explored in a Photoroom AI image test examining the value of freelance expertise. For this programme, coaching and mentorship are the stated means of helping the more intensively supported cohort apply what they learn.

What happens next

Eligibility requirements, cohort intake arrangements and information about online learning will be released when AI for Every Business launches. Those details will establish how owners can access the offer and how the smaller group receiving intensive support will be brought into the programme.

The announcement does not give a precise opening date within autumn 2026 or specify the size of that intensive-support cohort. Businesses considering participation therefore do not yet have the full entry requirements or intake timetable.