The Tech Elite Is Funding an Alternative to College

Andreessen Horowitz has a message for up-and-coming tech talent: Don’t drop out of school to start a company; come do school with us instead.

The storied venture-capital firm is investing $35 million in an unaccredited San Francisco-based two-year alternative to traditional college for students ages 16 to 22. Though named the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, the school will operate as an independent business led by Gagan Biyani, co-founder of the ed-tech platform Udemy.

Some of the heaviest hitters in tech are serving as founding partners: Anthropic, Google, Meta Platforms, Nvidia and OpenAI, among others, will provide access to software and compute, and open their offices for learning purposes.

Applications to the academy will open this week for the founding class, who will begin a one-year program in the fall of 2027, tuition-free. In 2028, pending regulatory approval, the full two-year offering will begin, with tuition in line with elite private universities, says Biyani.

“The idea is to create an AI-native education offering so that these students can be ready for jobs at the top leading tech companies, or to start their own tech company,” he says. “In the modern world, knowing how to build and ship things is even more important than it’s ever been.”

Once enrolled, students will spend up to 80% of their time on project-based learning such as building an AI model, creating a product or interviewing industry experts. Attendees of the academy will also have the opportunity to participate in “co-ops”—essentially internships—with founding partners.

Silicon Valley has long sought to disrupt higher education through online learning. Now, alternative education models that emphasize real-world skills mixed with AI tutoring are gaining traction, especially among high-earning parents who believe traditional education is broken.

As with any new educational model that hasn’t been time-tested, experts can be skeptical.

John Friedman, dean of the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University and an economist who has studied long-term outcomes from college, says having top industry leaders speak to students is an obvious plus from which students will benefit.

But there are distinct benefits to schools with proven track records and teachers with decades of experience, he adds, not to mention environments where students interact with others whose career plans diverge from their own.

“There’s something to learning how to engage and cooperate and figure out how to work with all these different people in the world,” Friedman says.

College is still a great option for most kids, but there is a particular type of student it is no longer suitable and for whom the academy—and the firm—can serve, Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, says in a prerecorded podcast about the school.

The AI revolution is likely to be as transformational for jobs as the industrial revolution, and many kids would benefit from a learning environment that doesn’t involve sitting in five hours of lectures a day, he adds.

“Maybe it’s better to have more contained instruction, more time with the tools, more time learning on an individual pace with AI,” Horowitz adds. “There needs to be a pioneer that shows that way.”

The academy’s backers stand to benefit by getting early access to tech’s next wave of talent and ideas. Some of the most successful AI companies are run by college dropouts in their 20s.

“Venture is the discovery and cultivation of talent, and that’s what universities are, too,” says Erik Torenberg, a general partner with Andreessen Horowitz who will sit on the school’s board, along with co-founder Marc Andreessen. “I’m sure we’ll invest in some of the founders that come out.”

As for the curriculum, many details are still being sorted out. But traditional teaching credentials won’t be required of the academy’s instructors. Biyani says there is a limited correlation between having a Ph.D. in a given subject and being a good teacher. He envisions lectures from prominent tech figures, mentorship from partners at the firm and Montessori-inspired learning.

Learning tracks will include both tech-heavy subjects (“Aerospace, Defense & Industrial Systems,” “AI Research & Models”) and ones more focused on other arts and sciences (“Health & Human Performance,” “Writing & Culture”). One course is titled “The Geometry of Luck,” in which students will learn “about arranging a life so good fortune flows through it.”

Students will live in local housing coordinated by the school and might also partake in museum visits, cultural excursions and guest talks from people outside the tech industry.

Biyani also plans to fill a gap he sees in traditional colleges: the development of personal skills.

“Once you enter the quote-unquote real world, you sort of recognize that the school world actually doesn’t operate the same way at all,” he says. “We want to build full humans.”

If the academy had been open earlier, Martinez says, she might have sent her son there instead of Berkeley.

Martha Martinez of Mission Viejo, Calif., has an 18-year-old son, Adrian Martinez, who has already been identified as a potential candidate for the Horowitz Andreessen Academy. He is currently a computer-science student at the University of California, Berkeley. By the age of 15, he had participated in a developer-feedback program with Meta.

“Learning doesn’t have to be limited to a classroom,” she says.

Her son already knows that he wants to spend his life working as a founder, she adds. “It’s a whole different breed of kids.”