Harvard Business School launches $699 bootcamp with AI instructor avatars

Harvard Business School unveiled HBS Foundry, an eight-week program pairing live weekly sessions with AI avatars of professors. [2][3] The bootcamp charges $699, which represents less than one percent of the school's traditional MBA tuition that costs upward of $75,000 per year. [2]

During the program, participants pitch ideas and navigate simulated board meetings while receiving real-time feedback from AI avatars modeled after actual HBS instructors. [2] These avatars engage dynamically during practice pitches and adapt their feedback based on the participant's performance rather than replaying canned responses. [2]

By training AI on instructor teaching styles and feedback patterns, Harvard can scale its educational reach without adding faculty. HBS Foundry provides early-stage entrepreneurs an alternative to a traditional MBA by simulating high-stakes business scenarios at a lower price point, leveraging models akin to OpenAI's ChatGPT. What the sources don't address: How the AI avatars handle highly niche or deeply technical startup concepts that fall outside the instructors' standard training data.