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Harvard Business School has launched HBS Foundry, an eight-week startup bootcamp priced at $699, according to The Asia Business Daily’s report citing The New York Times. The program uses conversational AI agents trained on faculty knowledge and video avatars created with HeyGen to simulate activities including investment pitches, sales meetings and board meetings.
The Asia Business Daily reports that Harvard Business School launched HBS Foundry, an eight-week startup bootcamp centered on AI-enabled instruction. The reported tuition is $699, approximately 960,000 South Korean won. The course is aimed at aspiring entrepreneurs and uses conversational AI agents trained on the knowledge of HBS faculty members. The report describes the program as a way for students to receive customized guidance while developing and testing business ideas.
According to The Asia Business Daily, the program uses technology from professional AI video producer HeyGen to create video avatars resembling professors. Students can interact with the avatars in one-on-one conversations designed to simulate practical startup situations, including investment pitching, sales meetings and board meetings. Faculty members, including Jeff Bussgang, an HBS adjunct professor and co-founder of venture capital firm Flybridge, reportedly participated directly in creating their own avatars.
The report says HBS designed the system to provide unusually severe criticism rather than the flattering approval often associated with AI-generated responses. It quotes Tom Eisenmann, a co-lead professor, as saying the agents were trained so strictly that they rarely approved a business idea on the first attempt. The Asia Business Daily also reports that a photo of a professor increased chatbot usage during testing, and that students accepted the avatar-based format relatively naturally. These claims come from the reported account and are not independently confirmed here.
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The program illustrates a consequential shift in AI education from general-purpose tutoring toward personalized, instructor-branded practice. It could let students rehearse high-stakes entrepreneurial interactions more often, but the report does not independently establish the system’s accuracy, educational effectiveness, privacy safeguards or the terms governing faculty likenesses and training data.
The reported program matters because it treats AI as a substitute for repeated access to a recognizable instructor, not merely as a generic writing or research assistant. Entrepreneurship training often depends on practice: presenting an idea, responding to objections, revising a strategy and trying again. An AI system that is available outside scheduled meetings could provide more opportunities for that repetition, although the report supplies no independent evidence that the interactions produce better ventures or stronger student learning.
The scalability argument is central to the report. It says HBS serves roughly 900 MBA students per year and cites Harold Solomon, who leads Georgia Tech’s entrepreneurship program, saying that an individual professor can handle only a limited number of face-to-face meetings each week. If the reported system can deliver useful, individualized practice at a lower marginal cost, universities could extend specialized coaching beyond the students who can secure scarce faculty time. That possibility is practical, but the article does not disclose operating costs, enrollment capacity, staffing requirements or whether human instructors remain involved in reviewing student work.
The format also raises questions about authority and trust. The report says students were more willing to use an AI chatbot when it displayed a particular professor’s image, suggesting that identity and perceived expertise affect how people receive automated advice. That may make feedback more engaging, but it can also make errors appear more credible. The source does not independently confirm how closely each avatar reflects the professor’s actual views, whether students are clearly told when they are interacting with AI, or what protections apply to student business ideas and other sensitive information.
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Key questions include whether HBS expands the program, how many students enroll, whether the avatars accurately represent faculty views, and how the system handles incorrect or overly confident feedback. Independent evaluation of learning outcomes, student privacy, consent, accessibility and the economic effect of scaling faculty instruction would be needed to assess the program beyond its reported launch.
The first issue to watch is evidence of educational value. The source describes favorable reactions, increased usage during testing and a design intended to produce rigorous criticism, but it does not provide controlled comparisons, student performance data, venture outcomes or independent assessments of feedback quality. Future reporting should distinguish engagement from learning and should test whether the avatars identify meaningful weaknesses without discouraging students through arbitrary or inaccurate rejection.
Governance will be equally important. The report does not state how faculty consented to the use of their appearance, voice or accumulated teaching materials, how likeness rights are limited, or whether professors can review and correct generated answers. It also does not explain what happens to students’ startup concepts, financial assumptions, personal information or uploaded materials. HBS’s data-retention, security and access policies, along with any restrictions on using student interactions to improve the system, remain meaningful unknowns.
The program’s future scope is another open question. The source does not report enrollment, availability beyond the bootcamp, geographic access, accessibility features, refund terms or whether the $699 fee covers the full experience. It is also unclear whether HBS plans to add more faculty avatars or apply the model to other academic programs. Independent scrutiny should examine whether scaling through avatars preserves the nuance, accountability and subject-matter judgment of human instruction, particularly when students rely on the system for consequential business decisions. Those questions will determine whether the reported experiment remains a limited course or becomes a broader model for business education.