At 'AI Coachella,' Stanford Students Line Up to Learn From Silicon Valley Royalty

As thousands of influencers descended connected confederate California earlier this period for the yearly Coachella Music Festival, a precise Silicon Valley programme dubbed “AI Coachella” was taking signifier a fewer 100 miles northbound successful Palo Alto. The class, CS 153, is 1 of Stanford’s buzziest offerings this semester, and similar the euphony festival, it features a star-studded lineup of celebrities—in this case, not popular artists, but Big Tech CEOs.

The people is co-taught by Anjney Midha, a erstwhile Andreessen Horowitz wide partner, and Michael Abbott, Apple’s erstwhile VP of engineering. The database of impermanent lecturers reads similar a Signal radical chat galore VCs would wage to join: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, AMD CEO Lisa Su, Anthropic philosopher Amanda Askell, and White House Senior Policy Advisor for AI Sriram Krishnan, among others. It’s the 4th twelvemonth Midha and Abbott person taught immoderate mentation of this class. Once registration went unrecorded this year, the class’s 500 seats rapidly filled up, with dozens of students connected the waitlist and thousands much watching the lectures posted connected YouTube.

On Tuesday, Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Ben Horowitz came to speak. I planned to attend, but astatine the past minute, a spokesperson for Midha told maine the people was excessively afloat for journalists to travel in.

Part of Stanford’s allure has agelong been entree to Silicon Valley elites. Its field sits conscionable a fewer miles from Sand Hill Road, location to storied task superior firms, and it’s not uncommon to spot San Francisco startups similar Cursor oregon Vercel recruiting from the school’s machine subject clubs. CS 153 blends entree to Silicon Valley’s apical brass and acquisition successful an utmost way—which is precisely wherefore immoderate radical person taken contented with it.

After a screenshot of CS 153’s impermanent lecture lineup went viral connected societal media this year, immoderate critics argued that students should beryllium spending their clip successful “real” classes, not attending a unrecorded podcast signaling hosted by VCs. The connection connected field is that different Stanford professors person chafed astatine what immoderate spot arsenic a solemnisation of earthy power.

“Protip for Stanford undergrads: beware the classes with impermanent talker lineups that work similar AI coachella,” said Jesse Mu, an Anthropic researcher, successful a station connected X. “You’re fundamentally paying $5k to perceive to a unrecorded podcast series.”

“Everyone taking CS 153. Only 3 radical successful my Stanford functional investigation people today,” wrote Luke Heeney, a probe chap successful economics astatine Stanford University, successful different post. “Remember to devour your veggies.”

Midha has leaned into the mockery. He ordered 500 T-shirts that work "I took CS 153 and each I got was AI coachella," which helium plans to manus retired to students connected Thursday. "The critics were unintentionally reddish teaming my system," helium tells me, framing the debacle successful the infrastructure connection of an engineer. "I was like, huh, AI Coachella? Is that a diagnostic oregon a bug? That's wholly a feature. That's merchandise marketplace fit."

Midha and Abbott precocious launched a caller task firm, AMP, which aims to proviso AI startups with some superior and computing capacity. Midha disclosed astatine the opening of the people that respective impermanent lecturers tally companies that he’s invested in, including Black Forest Labs, Mistral, Sesame, and Periodic Labs. But that entree is portion of the class’s appeal.

So what precisely bash Stanford students larn astir successful AI Coachella? The people is mostly astir frontier AI systems, which galore undergraduate machine subject courses lone interaction on. Midha spent the archetypal lecture of the twelvemonth discussing the computing infrastructure that supports AI models. He argued that AI chips are not commoditizing, meaning their terms is not decreasing implicit time. To beryllium his point, helium shared interior charts he’d aggregated astatine AMP connected Nvidia H100 prices expanding successful the past 90 days.