Nonprofit technology organization TechSoup will manage the newly launched Rural AI Catalyst Fund, a collaborative effort to build an AI-skilled workforce in rural communities across the U.S. The fund is being launched with an anchor investment from Google, toward a total funding target of $5.5 million.
The announcement was made during the recent 2026 Rural Summit in Buffalo, N.Y. The fund’s work will be informed by a Community Advisory Council (CAC). TechSoup will announce further contributors throughout the year.
The fund is focused on helping rural communities expand workforce pathways, strengthen key local sectors like agriculture, healthcare, education, and small business, and build long-term resilience through technical training.
In addition to TechSoup, founding members of the Community Advisory Council include: the Aspen Institute; the Center on Rural Innovation; CoBank; Communities Unlimited; Future Farmers of America; Partners for Rural Transformation; and, Partners for Rural Impact.
“Each tech job created in a rural community creates an additional three to five local jobs,” said Dreama Gentry, president and CEO, Partners for Rural Impact. “This fund provides the necessary investment to make those opportunities a reality for the workforce of tomorrow.”
The fund will focus on “place-based” strategies across multiple regions looking at rural communities in states across the U.S., including Texas, Nebraska, and Georgia. By making advanced data and technology resources accessible, the initiative aims to help rural communities capture the benefits of AI, lower the barriers for risk and innovation, and create high value jobs.
“TechSoup has always been about getting resources into the hands of community members, and the CAC surfaced the need of rural organizations to leverage AI to strengthen their operations and expand their impact,” said Marnie Webb, CEO of TechSoup. “This fund, with its foundational investment from Google, does just that. We are glad to be involved and eager to bring in other investors.”
The Rural AI Catalyst Fund is managed by TechSoup, with strategic input provided by the CAC. This structure ensures that funders and program partners — including a coalition of rural leaders — keep decision-making near to the communities served, ensuring the fund’s resources address the actual lived realities of rural and indigenous life.
Communities and local innovators will be able to take advantage of technology, data, and AI upskilling and co-building through services providers like the Data and Technology Hub, partner of TechSoup and The Ballmer Group.
The Council has identified three foundational objectives for the fund’s intervention:
- Closing the Innovation Gap for the Next-Generation Workforce: Scale AI literacy and vocational pathways for workers and underemployed individuals. By focusing on employability, the fund ensures that the digital divide does not become a permanent barrier to rural economic mobility.
- Strengthening the Vital Sectors of Rural Life: Provide targeted AI capacity building for the industries that anchor rural stability depending on place-based needs whether in agriculture, healthcare, education and small business. This approach ensures that technology acts as a connective tissue for local innovation rather than a force for displacement.
- Building Long-Term Resilience: Help local organizations solve complex, business-aligned challenges. Through technical training, enable the grassroots organizations to treat data as a public good and optimize their operations to better serve their communities.
“AI is reshaping industries at an unprecedented pace that requires us to look beyond traditional tech hubs to find the next wave of progress” Utaukwa Allen, global head of Economic & Community Development at Google, said via a statement. “Rural communities are often underestimated, yet they are frequently the sites of resilient innovation. Google is proud to join TechSoup and our partners in this Advisory Council to ensure these regions have the tools to prove that world-class ideas can, and do, start anywhere.”
