Harvard Business School, where MBA can cost over a crore, launches Rs 67,000 programme to teach how to do business

Harvard Business School (HBS) has introduced a new eight-week entrepreneurship bootcamp that uses artificial intelligence (AI) avatars modelled on its faculty to help aspiring founders develop and test their startup ideas. The HBS Foundry programme costs $699, or around Rs 67,000, and allows participants to practise investor pitches, customer conversations and board meetings with AI versions of Harvard instructors.

The programme combines AI-based mentorship with live sessions involving entrepreneurs, investors and Harvard experts. According to HBS, the eight-week bootcamp is designed to help founders move from identifying a problem to validating their market, developing a business model and preparing a pitch. Participants can ultimately progress towards a pitch opportunity linked to up to $100,000 in funding.

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How Harvard's AI professors work

The AI avatars are based on the teaching styles and areas of expertise of participating HBS faculty members. Harvard has worked with AI avatar company HeyGen to develop the digital versions, with faculty members voluntarily taking part through interviews, recording sessions, testing and feedback.

The avatars are designed to offer founders a way to repeatedly challenge their ideas before they meet human mentors or investors.

The technology is particularly aimed at situations where founders need repeated practice. Instead of waiting for an appointment with a professor or mentor, participants can use the AI versions to rehearse the same pitch several times and receive feedback.

HBS describes the broader Foundry platform as an "AI-native digital workspace" that combines personalised AI mentorship with access to real experts and fellow founders.

'Uber for bananas' pitch puts AI avatar to the test

The unusual concept was tested by New York Times reporter Sarah Kessler, who pitched an "Uber for bananas" business idea to an AI version of Jeff Bussgang, a Flybridge Capital co-founder and HBS senior lecturer.

The virtual Bussgang reportedly responded calmly but remained unconvinced by the idea, while its slightly repetitive movements highlighted the fact that the interaction was with a digital simulation rather than the professor himself.

Bussgang himself has acknowledged that seeing his digital counterpart can feel somewhat unsettling. However, he has also said that his students enjoy using the avatar, highlighting the contrast between the novelty of AI professors and their potential usefulness as practice tools.

Harvard says AI clones are not replacements for professors

HBS has stressed that the avatars are not intended to be exact replicas or replacements for the real faculty members. Shikhar Ghosh, one of the professors whose expertise is represented through the programme, said the purpose is to give founders another way to prepare and challenge their thinking before engaging with faculty and mentors in person.

Foundry director Katharina Rings said the idea for the AI experiences came from founders themselves, who wanted a space where they could practise and receive challenges before presenting their ideas to mentors and investors. The project initially began in 2024 as a simpler chatbot concept, but feedback from users led the team towards a more structured and interactive experience.

760 founders have reportedly joined

According to a Harvard spokesperson cited by Fortune, around 760 founders had participated in the bootcamp by August 2026. The programme is not an HBS degree course and does not provide academic credit.

Instead, Harvard positions Foundry as a way to extend entrepreneurial support to founders who may not otherwise have access to the school's networks and resources.

The programme is also part of a wider experiment in using AI to make expert guidance available to more people. Harvard's approach follows similar efforts by other universities, including Georgia Tech, where AI-based faculty avatars and teaching assistants have been used in educational settings.

For Harvard, the experiment raises a broader question about the future of entrepreneurship education: how much of the mentorship traditionally delivered through one-to-one interactions with professors can be scaled through AI, without losing the human judgement and relationships that make such guidance valuable.

Foundry's model attempts to strike that balance by putting AI practice tools alongside live faculty interaction and founder communities.

Inputs from agencies