Andreessen Horowitz is rolling out the Horowitz Andreessen Academy as a no tuition training track for young people already tinkering with tech and aiming to build AI products. Framed as an option for those who might otherwise pursue elite schools, it includes instruction, computing resources and money to cover travel. Students are expected to arrange their own housing, and the program is working to identify options.
The first cohort, slated to begin in San Francisco in Fall 2027 with roughly 50 students, runs one year. The firm plans to offer a two year version beginning the following year.
Andreessen Horowitz and a roster of individual backers are putting up $42 million to kick off the Academy, with supporters including Adam D'Angelo, who previously served as Facebook's Chief Technology Officer, and Palantir Technologies Inc. CTO Shyam Shankar. It was developed with partners such as Anthropic PBC, Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Nvidia Corp. and Palantir. More than 40 additional companies - many tied to Andreessen Horowitz's portfolio - are involved. Databricks Inc. and Cognition AI Inc., among others, intend to hire from the Academy after the program concludes.
Andreessen Horowitz wants the option to back startups that emerge from the Academy, and it also hopes that many of the Academy's students will go to work at the firm's existing portfolio companies.
The Academy is targeting applicants already experimenting with technology who want to "learn at the speed of Silicon Valley" through a mix of mentorship by experienced founders and hands-on creation of their own projects. CEO Gagan Biyani said on Bloomberg Tech on Tuesday that instruction will cover everything from "building and scaling AI applications" to "finding love." The company said other coursework includes storytelling and new media, founder led sales and startup mechanics.
"They've had an internal effort to rethink higher education for a long time," Biyani said of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. He said that only in the recent past did they decide the moment had come to step into the fray and offer an alternative.
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Tech has long celebrated young founders, often college dropouts, from Meta's Mark Zuckerberg to Stripe's Patrick Collison and John Collison. Lately, AI builders like Scale AI's Alexandr Wang have captured attention. Peter Thiel's Thiel Fellowship, launched in 2011 for people aged 22 or younger, helped train founders such as Figma Inc. CEO Dylan Field. And Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan said last October that his accelerator was seeing especially fast expansion among founders ages 18 to 22.
Palantir rolled out its own in house track last year for recent high school graduates, the engineering heavy Meritocracy Fellowship. CEO Alex Karp has been one of the most vocal tech leaders on skipping college, arguing that AI will devalue degrees and urging young people to pursue vocational paths that are less susceptible to automation.
If the Academy becomes a draw for ambitious 18 to 22 year olds, it could feed talent and fresh startups into companies tied to its partners and Andreessen Horowitz's portfolio. For anyone watching the AI names here, that is another pipeline of recruits and founder led projects that could shape what you use - and eventually what you can invest in - a few years out.
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