To broaden its educational offerings, Harvard Business School recently introduced an innovative entrepreneurial bootcamp that incorporates AI avatars modeled after its distinguished faculty. The newly launched HBS Foundry program employs these avatars in a variety of ways, such as overseeing practice pitch sessions and simulating boardroom scenarios to support aspiring founders.
$699 Foundry Bootcamp Uses AI Avatars for Mentorship
Aimed at founders in the early stages of building their ventures, this eight-week course is priced at $699. While live sessions with actual faculty members are held each week, the program’s defining feature is the deployment of custom AI avatars, which supplement real-time learning by providing personalized critique and guidance outside of scheduled classes. The creation of these digital instructors was undertaken by HeyGen, a startup specializing in digital human technology.
Instead of limiting virtual interactions to standard chatbots, the program leverages these avatars to deliver a highly interactive experience, particularly in pivotal activities like perfecting investor presentations or undergoing simulated board evaluations. For these exercises, students engage directly with AI-driven facsimiles of Harvard’s educators, receiving insights and feedback that reflect the teaching methods and personalities of the real professors.
Participants Welcoming, Open to Further Refinement
According to program director Katharina Rings, the team initially considered implementing a chatbot-style tool. However, feedback gathered during pilot testing showed participants preferred more lifelike, structured support. This insight led to replacing the chatbot with full-bodied avatars, which has contributed to a richer and more formalized training environment.
Participants have responded mostly favorably to the avatar system. While some college students elsewhere have raised alarms about AI integration in academia, those enrolled in Foundry expressed excitement about the digital guides. Jeff Bussgang, Harvard faculty member and co-founder of Flybridge Capital, acknowledged that his virtual counterpart is “a little creepy,” but added, “My students love it.”
The avatars have been praised for their realism. Sarah Kessler, a reporter for the New York Times, described pitching her concept—an “Uber for bananas”—to both the real and AI version of Bussgang. Both provided her with skeptical feedback, but she found the AI’s rigid facial reaction particularly memorable.
Expanding Future Prospects with Blended Formats
With these highly advanced AI avatars, Harvard is making business education more accessible and interactive, addressing the growing appetite for remote learning beyond its physical campus. By fusing live faculty-led events with the support of artificial instructors, the school intends to pioneer a scalable approach to entrepreneurship instruction. Such innovation may pave the way for other elite institutions to merge digital and in-person strengths for broader student outreach.
As higher education continues to undergo digital change, the results from the HBS Foundry bootcamp and its use of AI-driven teaching tools may shape new programs not only at Harvard, but at business schools around the world.