Horowitz Andreessen Academy plans $42 million launch in SF

Horowitz Andreessen Academy will open in San Francisco in Fall 2027 with $42 million in funding for a tuition-free founding fellowship.

A fellowship before a degree

The Academy said applications are open for its Founding Class Fellowship, an inaugural one-year program aimed mainly at graduating high school seniors. It will also consider applicants now attending four-year universities and international students, with some participants expected to use the program as a gap year or college deferral.

The school is positioning itself against conventional higher education rather than as a standard campus program. It says students will not receive traditional grades, exams or assigned homework; time will instead be split among short courses, projects and company placements.

The curriculum is built around three formats: Pursuits, Courses and Co-Ops. Pursuits are self-directed projects or startup ideas, Courses run from two days to four weeks, and Co-Ops place students inside operating companies to learn through work.

Ten partners supply the network

The founding partner list gives the project immediate access to the center of the AI and startup economy. The Academy named Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit and Stripe as its first 10 company partners.

Depending on the company, those partners may provide compute, hardware access, curriculum input, hands-on training or co-op opportunities, according to the announcement. The Academy also said more than 40 hiring partners will consider students for co-op and full-time roles.

The school cited the broader a16z network as part of the recruiting pitch. According to the announcement, the firm’s portfolio includes more than 19,000 open roles across more than 850 companies, a labor pool the Academy wants students to use before or instead of a traditional degree path.

$42 million backs the launch

The Academy said it has raised $42 million, with a16z leading the financing. Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg are joining the board, according to the announcement.

The listed angel investors include Adam D’Angelo of Quora, Tobi Lütke of Shopify, Tony Xu of DoorDash, Fidji Simo of OpenAI, Garry Tan of Y Combinator, Joe Liemandt of Alpha School and Shyam Sankar of Palantir. The mix ties the school to consumer internet, AI, defense technology, online education and startup financing.

Each Founding Class Fellowship student is slated to receive more than $50,000 in compute credits and a $5,000 budget for travel and research. The Academy said it plans to announce additional offers before the September 2027 start date.

San Francisco is the bet

The campus will be located in San Francisco, a deliberate choice for a program built around proximity to founders, operators and technical talent. The Academy’s launch materials describe the campus as a gathering place for students, startup workers and mentors rather than only a classroom site.

That location is part of the product. For a school aimed at AI-era company formation, the mechanism is density: students can meet employers, collaborators and investors in the same city where many partner companies already recruit.

Two approvals shape the plan

If the free fellowship draws enough technical applicants, the macro channel is labor supply: more early-career builders could enter AI and defense-tech firms without waiting for a degree. For the Academy, that would validate the one-year format; for the sector, it would create another hiring route alongside universities, boot camps and founder networks.

If regulatory approval for the planned two-year program is delayed or denied, the Academy’s expansion would remain limited to the fellowship model. That route would reduce near-term institutional scale, while keeping the school closer to a selective talent network than a degree-granting alternative.

The main open variables are admissions size, regulatory timing, employer conversion rates and whether students can turn co-ops into durable jobs or companies. For tech employers, the test is simple: whether an academy built for builders produces workers who can ship useful products faster than the traditional pipeline.