Andreessen Horowitz has launched the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a tuition-free, for-profit program for high school graduates and college dropouts seeking an alternative to traditional university. Applications for the inaugural Founding Class Fellowship opened on September 22, with the first cohort scheduled to begin in Fall 2027. Backed by $42 million led by a16z, the one-year fellowship will replace grades, tests and conventional lecture-based instruction with self-directed projects called Pursuits. Each fellow will receive more than $50,000 in compute credits (funds for cloud-based computing) and a $5,000 travel and research budget. Faculty slated to teach short, intensive courses include Sam Altman and Naval Ravikant. Founding corporate partners include Google, Meta, OpenAI, Anduril, Coinbase and NVIDIA, while more than 40 hiring partners are prepared to recruit graduates. The curriculum is being developed with those companies as the firm points to more than 19,000 open AI-related positions. A two-year accredited program is planned for Fall 2028, subject to regulatory approval, and could charge tuition comparable to elite private universities. The academy faces uncertainty over accreditation, credential portability and employer acceptance, against a backdrop of heightened scrutiny of the for-profit education sector in the United States.