Gagan Biyani's a16z school waives tuition. A San Francisco one-bedroom still asks $4,400.

Early applications for Gagan Biyani's new San Francisco school close on November 5. The founding class is about 50 students, and tuition is zero. They still have to cover a place to live. Zumper, the site that tracks what landlords ask on listings, put the median one-bedroom in the city at $4,400 for October.

The school is the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a for-profit program separate from Andreessen Horowitz, the venture firm usually shortened to a16z. Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen founded that firm. Andreessen sits on the academy board with Biyani and Erik Torenberg, an a16z general partner. The firm is putting in $35 million of a $42 million raise. That money builds the program.

Classes start in September 2027. Students are on a San Francisco campus from September through April, travel in May, and spend the summer in a co-op at a company. The co-op city is not fixed, so the lease may run past April. Eight months at the October asking rent is about $35,200, before groceries. A listing price is the number on the ad. A roommate can bring it down.

The school also provides more than $50,000 in compute credits and a $5,000 travel and research budget. Those credits buy computing time. Rent still comes out of a bank account. Students arrange their own housing and meals. Help with living costs, if the academy offers it, gets discussed after admission. Hardship stays off the form.

Biyani was born in Fremont, California, to Indian immigrant parents and studied economics at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2009 he co-founded Udemy, the online course site, with Eren Bali and Oktay Caglar, and left in 2012. Udemy went public in October 2021 at a valuation of about $3.7 billion. He has written that after an early funding round the founders owned less than 30 percent of the company, and that he was not invited to the IPO.

Sprig, the meal-delivery company he ran after Udemy, shut down in May 2017 after raising about $57 million. Maven, the live-course company he started next, raised a $20 million round led by a16z in 2021, about $25 million in all. The same investor is now funding the academy. A parent who only reads the launch will miss Sprig, the company that closed in between.

Students finish with a portfolio. The academy is not an accredited college, so the founding class leaves without a degree or college credit. Biyani said at the launch that college is still the right path for most students. Pew Research Center, using the 2024 census, found that 59 percent of Asian adults age 25 and older had at least a bachelor's degree. If your house treated the diploma as the plan, have that argument before anyone turns a university down.

Applicants from outside the United States are welcome. The school says it cannot guarantee a visa. F-1 is the status universities use when they enroll someone in a degree program. This academy has no degree to enroll them in. If the student in your house is not a citizen or a permanent resident, ask the school to name the status it expects, in writing, before anyone turns down a university that can issue the paperwork.

A longer program is still a plan. The academy intends to seek approval for a two-year course starting in fall 2028, with tuition similar to an elite private university. Stanford's undergraduate budget for 2026-27 is $97,545. Tuition is $67,731 of that, and housing and food are $22,944. Use those as a picture of what an elite private university costs this year. The academy has not set a 2028 price, and nobody can apply to that program yet.

Filing by November 5 does not commit a student to attend. Decisions on the early round are due by late January 2027, and a later round opens only if seats remain. Federal student aid, the grants and loans that move through an accredited college, does not come with this year.

If the college fund sits in a 529, the tax-advantaged account families use for education costs, read 529 Education Savings Benchmarks for Diaspora Households before anyone treats the academy as a reason to take money out. Status questions belong in Visa and Job Change Runway When Leave Means Status Risk. If parents would be paying the San Francisco rent on top of what they already send, put $4,400 in the Family Support Budget Calculator next to those wires.

Put $35,200 on the same sheet as the other education bills before the form goes in. That is the rent for the months they would actually live in the city.

This is educational reporting on the school's admissions pages, company announcements, and published rent and tuition figures, not admissions, tax, or immigration advice. Asking rents and sticker prices move. Your budget and your counsel decide the real plan.