Giorgi Mariamidze, founder and CEO of Skillwill, thinks the companies that gain most from AI will be the ones that train their people to use it. Skillwill has more than 6,000 graduates and campuses in Tbilisi and Batumi, and it is now opening a third in Kutaisi. It has also started advising companies on how to put AI to work.
In recent months Skillwill ran an intensive AI program for managers with the Business Association of Georgia (BAG) and hosted an AI For Business Workshop. In the same period, its college developed five professional diploma programs that had not been offered in Georgia before.
“A few years ago, Georgian companies were asking whether they needed AI at all. Now they want to know how to implement it quickly and correctly so that it actually gives them an edge,” says Mariamidze.
That question shaped the program with BAG. Instead of teaching specific tools, the sessions covered how companies’ operating models are changing, which tasks can be automated, and how to build an implementation plan a company can actually carry out.
The AI For Business Workshop followed: a closed session where senior executives compared notes on bringing AI into their companies. Both events were built around practical cases. A CEO, Mariamidze says, cares less about any particular tool than about what the business will look like in a few years.
He points to global data: “According to McKinsey’s 2025 research, companies are adopting AI most actively in IT, marketing and customer service, where productivity is growing fastest. Google and Microsoft have built AI assistants into everyday workflows so employees can spend more time on strategic and creative work.”
This has widened Skillwill’s role. Retraining individual employees achieves little if the organization around them stays the same, so the company now works with businesses on the change itself, not only on training.
The five new diploma programs are:
- Data Analytics
- Digital Marketing
- AI Implementation and Process Automation
- IT Project Management
- Software Testing
Asked whether AI will cost people their jobs, Mariamidze says AI itself won’t replace anyone; people who use it well will replace those who don’t. Every major technological shift, he notes, has shrunk some professions and created others.
“Georgia has talented people, a strong business sector and growing interest in technology. What we’re short on is time. If we want a competitive economy, we have to invest in people first. Knowledge will be the main resource of the next decade,” he says.
The Kutaisi branch, at the city’s Technological Hub, will take Skillwill’s student body past 5,000. Mariamidze wants Georgia to develop its own expertise rather than only buy technology made elsewhere, and to train enough skilled professionals that local companies can use AI to grow.
Forbes Georgia: სარედაქციო გუნდი
