Harvard Business School Launches $699 AI-Powered Entrepreneurship Bootcamp HBS Foundry

Key Takeaways

• Harvard Business School has launched HBS Foundry, an eight-week entrepreneurship bootcamp priced at $699.
• The program features AI video avatars of Harvard faculty, allowing participants to simulate pitches and receive guidance.
• Curriculum covers the full startup lifecycle, from idea refinement to investor and customer pitches.

At first glance, Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jeff Bussgang appears engaged and attentive on screen, smiling as he listens to a student’s startup concept during a video call. However, the participant is not speaking with Bussgang directly, but rather with his AI-generated video avatar. Bussgang is among several faculty members who have licensed their digital likenesses for HBS Foundry, a new eight-week bootcamp. According to The New York Times, Harvard has piloted the program with more than 100 universities nationwide.

The actual Professor Bussgang acknowledged to the Times that the simulation feels somewhat “creepy,” yet added, “my students love it.”

HBS Foundry aims to democratize entrepreneurship education beyond the roughly 900 MBA candidates Harvard admits annually. The platform guides participants through each stage of launching a venture—sharpening an idea, building a product, and pitching to investors and customers—by combining HBS course materials with a peer community and AI-driven tools.

Participants can rehearse pitches, sales calls, and boardroom scenarios in video-call simulations with AI avatars modeled on faculty like Bussgang. While founders, investors, and HBS faculty host live weekly sessions, the portal’s core function is to help students leverage the school’s startup resources and AI tools as they build their companies.

When development began in 2024, project director Katharina Rings envisioned a simple ChatGPT-style chatbot for founders. Feedback from an October trial shifted the approach: users demanded more structure. The guided version launched in April, and at least 760 founders have since enrolled.

Why They Added AI Avatars

HBS Foundry partnered with AI avatar platform HeyGen to create digital clones of professors. The response surprised program leaders. “It was just so clear from what the users were telling us and what the numbers were saying,” Rings said. “It seems like people actually much prefer the AIs, and they actually trust more, if it is based on one specific person’s input.”

Harold Solomon, a principal at the Georgia Institute of Technology and entrepreneurship educator, noted that the course allows academics to scale their reach. “I can have 20, 30 meetings a week, but beyond that, I literally can’t,” Solomon told the Times. “We can’t service the class, let alone the campus, in person constantly. So we need a way to scale.” Georgia Tech has integrated HBS Foundry into its own 12-week entrepreneurship course this summer.

Tom Eisenmann, faculty co-chair for the project, observed that despite the platform’s AI capabilities, its community forums have become a primary attraction. These spaces enable founders to connect directly with fellow entrepreneurs in the program. “They’re using the AI; they’re learning a lot,” Eisenmann said. “But it keeps coming back to humanity.”

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