Topline
Billionaire venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz is investing $35 million in a new, two-year college alternative program backed by venture capital billionaires and tech giants that promises to provide an “AI-native education offering” for business-minded high school graduates looking to break directly into the industry.
The Andreessen Horowitz office building in San Francisco, California.
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Key Facts
Applications open Tuesday for the Horowitz Andreessen Academy in San Francisco, which will accept a founding class of roughly 50 students to start a free, one-year program in the fall of 2027.
School CEO Gagan Biyani, who co-founded the ed-tech platform Udemy before joining the for-profit Academy, told the Sourcery newsletter the program is for “young builders who want to get jobs or start companies in the technology space.”
Biyani said the school will offer an “AI-native education” that is “highly experiential” and project based, and the admissions process will require applicants to submit portfolios, sit for interviews and undergo IQ testing.
He said 75% to 80% of students’ time will be spent working on projects or building out their ideas and attendees will have the opportunity to work with founding partners, which include Anthropic, Google, Meta Platforms, Nvidia and OpenAI.
The Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm has invested $35 million in the concept and an additional $7 million has been raised from other backers.
CRUCIAL QUOTE
“The big difference between going to the academy and going to college is we are not gonna prioritize your grades,” Biyani said. “We’re gonna prioritize proof of work.”
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
If regulators approve the program. If so, the full two-year offering will begin in 2028 with a tuition “equal or more to elite private universities,” Biyani said.
BIG NUMBER
More than $100,000. That’s now the annual cost (including tuition, room, board, fees, books, and living expenses) of more than a dozen elite private universities, including Duke University, Barnard College, Georgetown University and New York University.
Key background
The Academy reflects a growing push within Silicon Valley to bypass traditional higher education in favor of AI-native, hands-on apprenticeship. Billionaire Peter Thiel founded the Thiel Fellowship in 2011, which gives $250,000 over two years to participants who skip or drop out of school to build their companies. The Palantir Meritocracy Fellowship is a 4-month paid alternative to traditional college that evaluates candidates purely on “proof of work” and real-world execution, and acts as a direct hiring pipeline into full-time roles at Palantir. Accelerators like Y Combinator and early-stage startup incubators increasingly act as practical post-high school or post-dropout environments for would-be founders. Google has launched alternative education initiatives in the form of career certificates specifically designed to be accepted by top employers as equivalent to four-year degrees. Meta and Apple have built alternative hiring pipelines to train workers in specialized roles. Biyani argued the traditional college model is fundamentally unsuited for the AI era, and that students are better served learning on the job. Students must live in San Francisco to attend the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, embedding them directly into the start-up rich environment and opening an opportunity for the founding venture capital firm to have first dibs on promising companies.
FORBES VALUATION
Marc Andreessen, founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has an estimated net worth of $1.9 billion Tuesday. He co-founded the web browser firm Netscape, which was later bought by AOL, and also cofounded Loudcloud, which sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. His biggest financial success was as a seed investor in Facebook. His firm’s founding partner, Ben Horowitz, is not a Forbes billionaire but has backed companies like Skype, Lyft, Medium and Okta. He’s annually included on Forbes’ Midas list of the best investors in venture capital.
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