Business 6 min read By Alice Ashford
Andreessen Horowitz Backs $42m Unaccredited Academy Charging Harvard-Level Tuition
Andreessen Horowitz has launched a $42 million unaccredited academy in San Francisco that will charge elite private university tuition without awarding degrees, as the venture capital firm bets on the $2 trillion higher education market.
Andreessen Horowitz has become the first venture capital firm to launch its own alternative to university, backing a $42 million unaccredited academy that will charge tuition comparable to elite private institutions without awarding a degree. The Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a separate for-profit company from the venture capital firm, will open in San Francisco with a founding class of about 50 students in September 2027.
The one-year programme is tuition-free for its first cohort, with each student receiving $50,000 in compute credits and a $5,000 travel budget. But the academy intends to seek regulatory approval for a two-year programme starting in 2028, and if approved, expects to charge between $60,000 and $90,000 a year — placing it in the same price bracket as Harvard, Yale and other elite private universities.
Gagan Biyani, a cofounder of the $3.2 billion education technology unicorn Udemy who now runs the academy, framed the venture as a commercial opportunity rather than a rejection of higher education. «We believe in college,» he said. «The bet is that there's an opportunity to educate the next generation in a way that is more future-forward, and that's a big market opportunity.» He noted that higher education is a $2 trillion industry, adding: «We think there are lots of ways to turn this into a successful business.»
The academy's model splits the year three ways: September through April on campus in San Francisco, May travelling abroad, and June through August in a co-op placement at a partner company. Ten founding partners, drawn largely from Andreessen Horowitz's network, include Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit and Stripe. Their commitments vary — some provide compute, hardware credits or curriculum advice rather than hiring students. A further 50-odd hiring partners, from Databricks to Boom Supersonic, have committed to interviewing or considering students but not to hiring a set number.
Co-ops are typically paid, according to the school's FAQ, but this is not guaranteed. There is no minimum age for applicants, and all students must arrange their own housing. The academy does not take federal student aid and does not guarantee a job or a paid internship.
Teaching is not the primary focus, according to Biyani. «The primary thing we're offering is the ability for students to pursue their own objectives,» he said. The academy's homepage promises students will learn from people «shaping the future», with guest speakers including Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella, Mira Murati, Fei-Fei Li and Travis Kalanick. Most of those names are guest speakers who «come in for a talk or a fireside chat», Biyani said. A second tier of faculty has committed to multi-session courses, including Instacart cofounder Max Mullen and former Windows president Steven Sinofsky. A third tier of mentors will hold office hours. The course list ranges from «The Craft of Selling» to «AI Inference Engineering» to «Origins and Innovations in Digital Computing 1940–2025».
Admissions are based on «proof of work», though transcripts and test scores are still required. Sample applicants featured on the site include a teenager who built an AI book indexer with «six-figure ARR» and one who «created an AI dating coach with 1.7M likes».
Experts are sceptical about whether the model can scale. Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University who has argued that college is mostly a credential, believes it will work for the first 50 students but not beyond. «Something that can work for 50 handpicked people isn't going to work even for the top 5,000,» he said. «MIT is going to last for centuries. Don't worry about it.» He added that skipping college generally signals that «you're a weird person, and people are understandably nervous about hiring weird people», but the academy's selective admissions could overcome that — provided it remains elite.
Ryan Craig, a managing director at Achieve Partners, which builds apprenticeship programmes, is enthusiastic about the idea but doubts the plan to become a college. «It's a bootcamp with a plan to be a college, but I'd say not a realistic plan to be a college,» he said. He noted that many «alternative, innovative universities» charging elite-private tuition without federal aid have been tried before and failed. «It's hard to compete with free money from the government,» he said. Craig favoured a 21st-century work college model, where students earn enough in paid co-ops to cover tuition, but that would require partners to pay high school students near six-figure salaries. Biyani said the school will figure out financing after year one: «We will see over time how students will finance this.»
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