Overview
- The firm publicly opened applications on Tuesday, September 22 for a tuition‑free, one‑year Founding Class Fellowship of about 50 students that will begin in fall 2027.
- Andreessen Horowitz and other backers have seeded the Horowitz Andreessen Academy with $42 million and ten founding partners, including OpenAI, Google, Meta, Nvidia, Palantir, Anthropic, Replit, Stripe, Coinbase, and Anduril.
- Each founding fellow will receive substantial material support—more than $50,000 in compute credits and a $5,000 travel and research budget—and access to short expert‑led courses, mentors, guest speakers, and co‑op placements at partner companies.
- The academy is an independent, for‑profit, unaccredited company run by CEO Gagan Biyani with Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg on its board and Ben Horowitz as a cofounder, and it will not grant degrees or accept federal student aid in year one.
- Leaders plan to seek regulatory approval for a two‑year accredited program starting in fall 2028 that would charge tuition comparable to elite private universities, but experts warn accreditation is not guaranteed, the model may struggle to scale beyond a highly selective cohort, and students could face housing and financing burdens without federal aid.