a16z puts $35M into a school for high school graduates

Andreessen Horowitz announced The Horowitz Andreessen Academy on September 22, 2026, in a launch post by general partner Erik Torenberg. It's a full-time, in-person school in San Francisco for people coming out of high school. The venture firm incubated it and is putting $35M into the launch, the academy's FAQ says.

The academy has raised $42M in all from a16z and a group of individual investors, Fortune reported. It's a separate, for-profit company run by founder and CEO Gagan Biyani, who co-founded Udemy and the course platform Maven.

The first year is free, but students pay their own living costs

The founding class is expected to have about 50 students. The academy's FAQ and program page set out what they pay and what they get.

• Tuition: none for the Founding Class Fellowship
• Housing: students arrange and pay for it; dorms run $1,600 to $1,800 a month shared, $2,300 to $2,600 single
• Travel: a $5,000 budget for three to four weeks abroad
• Help with costs: need-based scholarships and grants for living expenses may be available
• Federal or state aid: none, and 529 funds can't be used tax-free
• Degree or credit: none, since the academy isn't accredited
• Equity: none; students own 100% of what they build
• Source: The Horowitz Andreessen Academy, checked October 11

Fortune also reported that each student gets $50,000 in compute credits. The academy's own pages say partners give access to compute but don't name a figure.

The free year may not last. The academy hopes to run a two-year program from 2028, TechCrunch reported, with tuition close to an elite private university. Biyani told Fortune that would mean about $60,000 to $90,000 a year, if regulators approve.

Students split the year between campus, travel and a company

The fellowship runs from September 2027 to August 2028, according to the program page. Students spend September to April on campus, May abroad and June to August in a co-op, a full-time placement inside a company.

On campus, the launch post splits the work into courses taught by founders and investors, and Pursuits, which are students' own projects. Sample courses include The Craft of Selling and AI Inference Engineering.

The post says Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella and Mira Murati, among others, will visit and lecture. Biyani told Fortune that most of those names are guest speakers who "come in for a talk or a fireside chat."

Partners offer co-ops, but jobs aren't guaranteed

The founding partners are Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit and Stripe. Depending on the company, they'll give compute, help with the curriculum or offer co-ops. More than 40 other companies have signed on as hiring partners.

Students still go through each company's normal interviews. The FAQ says the academy doesn't guarantee a co-op or a full-time job, and it can't promise that every co-op is paid. "Not all of them are going to take students for hiring," Biyani told Fortune.

Outside experts doubt the model can grow past 50 students

Economist Bryan Caplan of George Mason University told Fortune the idea should work for the first class. But "something that can work for 50 handpicked people isn't going to work even for the top 5,000," he said.

Ryan Craig of Achieve Partners, which builds apprenticeship programs, called it "a bootcamp with a plan to be a college" and doubted the second year. He told Fortune that colleges charging elite prices without federal aid have tried this before and failed.

Reddit was cooler still: the r/highereducation thread on The Wall Street Journal's story drew 22 comments. Of those, read on October 11, about half argued over whether students would miss ethics and the humanities. Most of the rest doubted graduates would get hired, and none was plainly positive.

I'm concerned that things like ethics, history, sociology, psychology, etc. will not be taught.

A Reddit user in r/highereducation, September 2026

That's a snapshot of one thread, not a survey.

Applications close November 5 for the first class

The academy is aimed at high school graduates who'd otherwise go to a four-year college. It picks students on what they've built, shipped or earned, though it still asks for transcripts.

Anyone who has finished more than two years of full-time college by August 2027 can't apply. International students can, but the academy can't guarantee a visa. Students can also accept a college place and defer it for a year.

Early applications are due November 5, 2026, with decisions by late January 2027. If places remain, the academy will open a regular round.