Andreessen Horowitz backs AI-era college alternative with $42M

Andreessen Horowitz is putting $42 million behind a new education venture aimed at young tech builders who might otherwise head to college, betting that the artificial intelligence boom is creating demand for a different path into Silicon Valley.

The Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a for-profit company incubated by the venture capital firm known as a16z, plans to bring its first class of roughly 50 students to San Francisco in September 2027 for a tuition-free, one-year fellowship.

Instead of relying heavily on traditional academic credentials, the academy says admissions will focus on what applicants have already built, shipped or earned. Students will spend much of the program working on projects and learning from technology executives and entrepreneurs rather than taking traditional tests and completing homework.

EMPLOYEES AT AI COMPANIES BACK BERNIE SANDERS BILL CRACKING DOWN ON DEVELOPMENT

Gagan Biyani speaks at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015 in San Francisco on Sept. 23, 2015. (Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

The approach represents a Silicon Valley experiment in how education could change as AI reshapes the skills companies seek from workers and founders.

“In our estimation, the AI revolution is going to be as transformational to jobs as the Industrial Revolution was to the agricultural society that came before it,” said Ben Horowitz, co-founder and general partner at a16z. “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. This isn’t just an investment idea for us. It’s an investment in the future of the country.”

A16z is joined in the $42 million investment by technology executives and investors including Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan and Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar.

NEW YORK OVERTAKES SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA AS LARGEST US TECH TALENT MARKET BY WORKFORCE SIZE

Co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Ben Horowitz walks to a morning session at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 9, 2021 in Sun Valley, Idaho. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The venture has also lined up Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic, Coinbase, Palantir, Stripe, Anduril and Replit as founding partners. The companies will provide resources and expertise, including software, hardware and computing power, according to the academy.

Each student is expected to receive…