Horowitz Academy Secures $42 Million for Free Inaugural Class
Gagan Biyani announced the establishment of the Horowitz Andreessen Academy in San Francisco, targeting the most promising high school graduates, with project-based learning at its core, supplemented by courses and lectures from Silicon Valley professionals.
The institution claims to have raised $42 million, led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Biyani as CEO, and Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg joining the board. The Q&A page states that the venture capital firm incubated this independent company and invested $35 million. Founding partners include Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit, and Stripe; it also mentions over 50 recruiting partners and more than 200 speakers and mentors. Individual investors include Adam D'Angelo, Tobi Lütke, Tony Xu, Fidji Simo, Garry Tan, among others.
The founding class will have approximately 50 scholarships, lasting one year and tuition-free, starting in the fall of 2027, with admissions based on completed, launched, or earned projects, not solely on grades and standardized tests. Students will manage their own accommodation, with the school assisting in pairing; there will also be over $50,000 in computing credits and a $5,000 travel research budget. After regulatory approval, a two-year paid program is planned to start in the fall of 2028, with tuition comparable to elite private universities. The first year will not confer transferable credit degrees.
Biyani previously co-founded Udemy and Maven. The target audience includes recent high school graduates or those who have attended college for one or two years, aged approximately 16 to 22. The official website is open for applications for the founding class, recruiting partners, and faculty positions.
This is part of the competition for talent entry. The buyers are ten founding companies looking to directly hire builders, while the sellers are the admissions and credit systems of four-year universities. Funding will shift from university tuition accounts to a venture capital-funded one-year pilot, with plans to transition into a paid two-year program; beneficiaries will be partner companies that can secure intern sources early and the funds managing this network, while traditional colleges that still rely on papers and standardized tests for screening, and cannot offer an equivalent list of mentors, will be under pressure. The tuition-free model only covers about 50 students in the first class, making the scale itself a selection mechanism.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
The academy brings venture capital's project-based due diligence to 18-year-old admissions. Admissions focus on projects rather than GPA, essentially advancing the YC application process by four years. The ten founding partners are not just guest advertisers; they are employment outlets integrated into the curriculum. Andreessen Horowitz's $35 million investment incubates an independent company, avoiding the blending of school and fund as the same legal entity, while placing partners on the board, keeping the network under the fund's control. Free for the first year in 2027, and tuition aligned with private schools in 2028, using one subsidized class to gain regulatory approval and reputation, before entering a scalable paid structure.
The capital path internalizes the pipeline for the next generation of founders. The computing credits and travel budget lower the cash threshold for project work, while self-managed accommodation leaves living costs to families, with the school only purchasing network and mentor time. The online experiences from Udemy and Maven are transformed into closed in-person classes, as recruiting partners seek local density for interviews, not just completion rates of recorded courses. The lack of accreditation means the first class is selling job opportunities, not diploma arbitrage.
This is in contrast to Minerva, Lambda School, Alpha School, and the old paths of college dropouts entering major companies. This time, the approach is not to encourage dropping out, but to establish a non-credit Silicon Valley entry point after high school. The industry is in an expansion phase of AI companies building their own talent academies.
The structural change is a reconstruction of the industry chain. Higher education's screening, teaching, and employment are separated, with employment contracts signed first. The mechanism is: whoever controls the list of recruiting partners can hold the first class without needing Department of Education accreditation; accreditation will only be for the second class's paid services. Universities sell degree liquidity, while this academy sells a short path to ten companies.
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The first class is tuition-free, buying a referenceable admission standard.
The recruiting partner list determines whether the school can continue, more than credits.
Venture capital in education brings project-based due diligence to age eighteen.