Silicon Valley's Biggest Investor Is Opening a College With No Degree, No Grades, No Federal Aid and Stanford's Price Tag. Sam Altman Teaches. Fifty Kids Get In.
About This Episode
Andreessen Horowitz announced Tuesday it is putting $35 million into the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, an unaccredited, for-profit, two-year alternative to college in San Francisco for people aged roughly 16 to 22, run by Udemy co-founder Gagan Biyani. The first class of about 50 starts in fall 2027 tuition-free with $50,000 in compute credits each; by 2028 the two-year version plans to charge $60,000 to $90,000 a year, award no degree, and take no federal student aid. Its founding partners are ten AI-era companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and Nvidia, and its 'faculty' are founders such as Sam Altman and Marc Andreessen.
Our Take
The firms automating away entry-level work just built a boutique replacement for the apprenticeship, and the question is who gets a rung on that ladder when it costs Stanford money, carries no degree, and admits fifty people.
Continue Reading on Unscarcity
The Vanishing Apprenticeship: Who Trains the Next Senior?
The academy is a private, paid re-creation of the first rung of the career ladder that AI is removing from entry-level jobs; the article's frame that junior work was secretly a factory for making competent adults explains why a VC firm would now sell that factory as a product.
The 1843 School Model That AI Just Killed
The academy's own three pillars (co-ops, founder-taught courses, self-directed pursuits) and its 'problems so hard you need AI' assignments map onto the article's replacement for the Prussian factory school, while its 50-seat, tuition-gated admission is the opposite of the article's everyone-serves civic apprenticeship.