Free AI School Offers 50 Students a Path Outside College
The free one-year program in San Francisco has $42 million in backing, and partners include Google, NVIDIA, and more than 40 other firms signed on to recruit students.
Bloomberg Daybreak: US Edition · Trump Promises No Iran Attack before Midterms; Hurricane Isaias Approaches USAndreessen Horowitz is starting a free school in San Francisco to train young people to build artificial intelligence products outside of college.
The academy, named the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, is intended as an alternative for students who might otherwise attend elite universities, including teenagers fresh out of high school and young people who have left college. Instead of tuition and dorm fees, students get a route to recruiting by Silicon Valley firms.
The program covers a place to live, access to powerful computers, and money for trips. Computing power is especially valuable because building AI products requires costly chips and data centers.
The academy was developed with tech companies including Anthropic, Google, NVIDIA, and Palantir. More than 40 other firms, many of them startups backed by Andreessen Horowitz including Databricks and Cognition AI, have agreed to recruit students after the program.
It is starting with $42 million in support and an initial 12-month group of about 50 learners in San Francisco, with a plan to expand to a two-year option the following year.
Questions people ask
Do students get a college degree from the academy?
No. There is no indication the academy will grant an accredited college degree. Like other alternative programs, its value to students is practical training, finished AI projects to show employers, and direct access to recruiters.
Why is free computing such a big deal for AI students?
Training or running capable AI systems requires large amounts of processing power, usually from specialized chips that rent for thousands of dollars per month in cloud data centers. For a student, free access removes one of the biggest financial barriers to building and testing real products.
What is Andreessen Horowitz?
Andreessen Horowitz, often called a16z, is one of Silicon Valley's largest venture capital firms and an early investor in companies including Facebook, Airbnb, and Coinbase. It also backs many AI startups, which gives it a strong incentive to expand the pool of young engineers.