The world's most powerful AI university has been established, Sam Altman serves as its lecturer, and Jensen Huang as well as Satya Nadella line up to make appearances in support of it.

The "world's most powerful AI university" has gone viral. Sam Altman serves as a lecturer, Jensen Huang and Satya Nadella line up to show their support, but it does not issue any degree at all.

01

HAA

Top VCs believe universities churn out talents too slowly, so a16z has founded its own university: Horowitz Andreessen Academy, referred to as HAA.

Its name is directly combined from the surnames of Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, the two co-founders of a16z.

It is a two-year boarding school located in San Francisco, targeting young people aged 16 to 22, with the first cohort of students enrolling in the fall of 2027.

According to Molly O'Shea's report, the school has completed a $42 million financing round, with the investor list consisting of Adam D'Angelo, Tobi Lütke, Tony Xu, Fidji Simo, and Shyam Sankar, forming an all-star lineup from Silicon Valley.

Its CEO is Gagan Biyani, co-founder of Udemy and Maven, a serial entrepreneur with two prior online education startup experiences.

This school has no degree accreditation, but what it offers is a ticket of admission to the core circle of Silicon Valley.

02

Stellar School Lineup

Take a look at the teaching list posted on the official website, where faculty members and partners are listed together.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, NVIDIA founder Jensen Huang, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison, AngelList founder Naval, Thinking Machines Lab CEO Mira Murati, World Labs founder Li Fei-Fei, Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, plus philosopher Agnes Callard, economist Tyler Cowen, and neuroscientist Andrew Huberman.

There are 241 more names of this caliber.

Among them, Sam Altman's role is worth specifying precisely: the official long announcement lists him in the list of founders that students "will learn from" (the same list also includes Brian Armstrong and Jensen Huang), and in the official website's schedule example, he appears in the form of a fireside chat, making a guest sharing as a lecturer.

a16z partner Erik Torenberg explained the logic behind running the school: his biggest regret back in university was being "out of touch with the real world". Therefore, HAA's teaching methodology only has three components: Co-op (working in companies throughout the year, not just during summer vacation), Course (taught by unicorn founders and cutting-edge scholars), and Pursuit (students' own projects, with dedicated full-time coaches assigned).

Students stay on the San Francisco campus from September to April of the next year, go abroad in May, and all go to partner enterprises for internships from June to August.

Students spend one third of the year working in enterprises.

03

Gathering of AI Industry Leaders

The enterprise partner list is equally impressive. There are ten founding partners: Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit, and Stripe, seven out of the ten are portfolio companies of a16z or enterprises with deep ties to the firm.

Ben Horowitz talked about the history of education: now AI is going to drive the same transformation. He cited the view of Stanford professor Dan Boneh: don't ban AI, the best assignments are problems that students cannot solve without AI.

a16z has invested in hundreds of companies, what is it most lacking? It is not capital, but top-tier young talents who can be put to use immediately.

The traditional path is: teenagers enter university at 18, graduate at 22, join a big tech company or start their own business, and may achieve something by the age of 26, then venture capitalists try to invest in them, which leaves a full eight-year gap in between.

HAA compresses these eight years into two years: students enroll at the age of 16 to 22, spend one third of the two years interning at partner companies, their graduation project is their own incubated startup, and their coaches are investors of the caliber of Elad Gil and Daniel Gross.

Torenberg's exact words are, "The Academy will provide dedicated coaches who understand your company and your mindset."

As for the tuition fees, or the valuation corresponding to the $42 million financing, they are not even a tiny fraction of a16z's total fund size. The cost of running a school is exchanged for a high-quality deal flow pipeline that stably outputs hundreds of outstanding talents who "dare to drop out of school to work on AI at the age of 18" every year. This deal is profitable no matter how you calculate it.

04

Summary

AI develops too fast, while universities move too slowly. That's why a16z founded this university.

Top venture capital firms are extending their reach into the education sector, not because they are passionate about nurturing talents, but because they can no longer afford to wait for universities to churn out talents slowly. As AI keeps lowering the age threshold for people to "build real products", locking in 16-year-old geniuses first may secure the unicorns of ten years later.

HAA will not start classes until 2027, and the quality of its first cohort of students has not been tested in any way.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Odd Studio", written by Tang Andy, edited by Zhou Huan, and published by 36Kr with authorization.