The tech elite of Silicon Valley are spending millions on a new college alternative that they hope will be an incubator for top talent, encouraging students to build AI models instead of taking science classes or doing homework.
Venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is spending $35 million on an unaccredited two-year alternative to traditional college based in San Francisco. It’s aimed at students ages 16 to 22 with the goal of cultivating the “world’s most ambitious young builders.”
The undertaking has raised another $7 million from founding partners including Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit and Stripe, according to Andreessen Horowitz, which is also known as a16z.
The Horowitz Andreessen Academy will technically operate as an independent business, not a school, run by Gagan Biyani – the co-founder of online-learning platform Udemy – while a16z partners Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg will join him on the board.
Investors are hoping young eggheads will enroll in the academy instead of dropping out of college to launch their own start-ups, so they can get first dibs on the next generation of AI talent. Some of the most valuable AI start-ups are run by teens and 20-somethings who have raised millions of dollars.
Each student will have access to more than $50,000 worth of coveted AI computing power from the founding partner companies, which will open their networks to enrollees and advise on the school’s curriculum.
Students will also receive a $5,000 travel and exploration budget, access to a16z’s investors and instruction from guest lecturers including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Steven Sinofsky, the former head of Windows, according to a press release.
More than 40 additional companies including Applied Intuition, Databricks and Shopify have signed on as hiring partners, so they’ll be scouting students for internships and full-time positions.
This week, the academy started accepting applications for its Founding Class Fellowship, a one-year, tuition-free program for about 50 students that will start in fall 2027.
It is seeking regulatory approvals for a two-year program starting in fall 2028. The academy did not share tuition estimates. Biyani told the Wall Street Journal it will be in line with elite universities.
“The most ambitious young people today are building companies from their parents’ living rooms, launching websites that reach millions of people and building robotic arms before they turn 18,” Biyani said in a statement.
The school’s founders said college is still a viable path for most students, but they predicted that the rapid rise of AI will be just as transformational to the jobs market as the Industrial Revolution was – and the new workers powering the shift will need a different path.
“The training that worked for the Industrial Revolution isn’t going to map perfectly onto the AI revolution, so somebody has to pioneer how you train a person for this new world. That’s what we built the Academy to do,” Ben Horowitz, co-founder and partner at a16z, said in a statement.
“This isn’t just an investment idea for us. It’s an investment in the future of the country.”
AI-native education offerings have been on the rise as investors argue it’s the best way to prepare the next generation, amid warnings that the new technology could eradicate thousands or even millions of jobs.
Joe Liemandt, one of the backers of the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, is also a partner and principal at Alpha School, a $65,000 private school that uses AI bots to teach k-12 students all their learning materials in just two hours a day.
Critics have been wary of new AI-based schools, warning they seem like an experiment that could put kids’ skills and education at risk – especially since most of the instructors don’t come from traditional teaching backgrounds.
At the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, traditional teaching credentials like an education degree or a Ph.D. won’t be required of instructors. Instead, the school will prioritize tech figures with real-world experience.
Learning tracks will include tech subjects like “Aerospace, Defense & Industrial Systems” and “AI Research & Models” along with humanities like “Writing & Culture” and “The Geometry of Luck,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Students will live in local housing arranged by the school and attend museum visits, cultural excursions and guest talks.