The Estonian government has partnered with OpenAI and Anthropic to launch the project 'AI Leap' to 'train AI skills and critical thinking' rather than 'banning AI' for students
Leading AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic have teamed up with the Estonian government to launch AI Leap, a nationwide initiative to teach high school students the skills to leverage AI.
Estonia launches AI in high schools with US tech groups
Estonia has a public digital infrastructure built over the past 30 years and a strong educational culture, which has resulted in some of the best results in Europe in the international academic achievement survey PISA . Leveraging this cultural background, Estonia has launched a new initiative called 'AI Leap' to teach AI skills to all high school students.
Estonian President Aral Kalisz said the AI Leap is not meant to replace teachers, but to develop students' critical thinking and awareness of AI. Kalisz told the Financial Times, 'We have to learn to use AI. AI is everywhere now.'
AI Leap has already conducted 'training workshops for using AI tools in classes' for approximately 3,000 teachers. In addition, from September 2025, AI learning tools will be provided free of charge to 20,000 high school students aged 16 and 17. In addition, in 2026, AI learning tools will be provided to vocational schools and lower grade students, increasing the number of students benefiting from AI Leap to '38,000' and the number of teachers to '2,000.'
Estonia is in talks with OpenAI and Anthropic about free access to their AI tools, and is also considering collaboration with other companies. Estonia has undergone extensive digitization over the past few decades, and despite having a population of just 1.3 million, there are data sets in the Estonian language for training AI models.
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Estonia's Education Minister Kristina Kallas said 'education has been inextricably linked to Estonian national identity' since the 17th century, when the country fought to preserve its language and culture under foreign occupation.
AI Leap is run by a public-private joint foundation and includes input from entrepreneurs such as Taavet Hinrichs, co-founder of the money transfer platform Wise , and Jaan Tallinn, an early developer of Skype. AI Leap's initial budget is 3.2 million euros (about 500 million yen), but is expected to increase to 6 million euros (about 937 million yen) in 2026.
Minister Kallas said schools need to innovate with AI capabilities in mind. The plan also aims to close the digital divide by prioritizing schools serving poorer areas and providing free computers to students where needed. 'It's not an app, an iPad, a laptop or ChatGPT that's important here. It's the teacher. We need to be able to trust that teachers know exactly what they're teaching,' Kallas said.
Minister Kallas noted that the evolution of AI tools has made having students write essays 'a wasteful task,' which is why it's important for students to develop their own critical thinking skills and improve their ability to evaluate the output of AI models.
Educational systems around the world are struggling to adapt to AI, and many schools are considering banning smartphones in classrooms to prevent AI from being used via smartphones. However, Wise's Hinrichs said, 'It's clear that AI is coming, and those who can use it well will have a big advantage,' and said schools need to be a place to experiment with technology.
In response to the suggestion that Estonia might become dependent on the United States in terms of technology, Minister of Education Karas said, 'We cannot develop all the new tools ourselves, so we have to rely on large companies, big and small. We need allies, we need cooperation, etc.'
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