Andreessen Horowitz is opening a new kind of school in San Francisco, one built for teenagers and young adults who want an alternative to the traditional college track. The venture capital giant is backing the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a private, full-time, in-person program, and applications are open for its tuition-free, one-year Founding Class Fellowship for recent high school graduates and current four-year university students.
The Academy describes itself as a highly selective school for the most ambitious young builders after high school, according to a16z.news. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the formation of the school was announced by Gagan Biyani, who serves as the Academy's chief executive. The school is based in San Francisco and, per the same announcement, is meant to serve students coming straight out of high school or the first two years of college.
There will be no traditional grades, tests, or homework, the Academy states in its own announcement. Instead, the curriculum is organized around three components: co-ops, courses and pursuits, with pursuits described as the core unit of education at the school. Courses are short, high-impact programs ranging from two days to four weeks long, often taught by technology founders and operators rather than career academics.
What Students Actually Do All Day
Every Academy student spends at least three months working full-time inside a company, according to theacademysf.com. Those co-op placements sit alongside self-directed pursuits, which can include personal projects or startup ideas that students develop on their own timeline instead of following a fixed syllabus. The same page notes that every student also receives a $5,000 travel budget for independent research and travel.
Applications are officially open for the Founding Class Fellowship, the Academy's inaugural one-year program set to begin in fall 2027. Fellowship students will have access to more than $50,000 in compute credits along with a $5,000 travel and research budget, the a16z announcement says. The fellowship itself is tuition-free, though the Chronicle reports the Academy also plans to offer a two-year degree program pending regulatory approval, which would likely charge tuition comparable to an elite private university if it launches as planned for fall 2028.
Backing From Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase and More
The Academy is launching with 10 founding partners it calls among the world's most innovative companies, including Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google and Meta. A separate announcement from a16z.com adds that students may have opportunities to work at those same founding partners plus NVIDIA, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit and Stripe through the co-op program. The dossier of source material shows conflicting figures for how many additional hiring partners exist beyond the 10 founders: the Academy's own announcement cites over 40 additional hiring partners, while the Chronicle reports more than 50.
Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg are joining the Academy's board, and the school says it has raised a total of $42 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The curriculum will also include guest lectures from prominent technology leaders. Per a16z.com, figures expected to visit and speak include Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella, Travis Kalanick, Mira Murati, Ali Ghodsi and Patrick Collison.
Pitched as an Alternative to College
Andreessen Horowitz intends the Academy to serve as an alternative for students who might otherwise attend elite universities, according to Bloomberg. The Academy's own materials frame that pitch around artificial intelligence reshaping what is worth teaching in the first place, arguing that the best assignments now are problems so hard they cannot be solved without AI, or the opportunity to generate problems that AI cannot yet solve. The stated focus of the school, in the group's own words, is on building rather than traditional academic assignments.
Whether that pitch draws students away from four-year universities in meaningful numbers remains to be seen. What is clear is that a group of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capitalists and technology companies is betting that a co-op-and-pursuits model, backed by $42 million and a roster of household-name corporate partners, can compete with a college degree for San Francisco's most ambitious teenagers.
