Harvard's $699 HBS Foundry Bootcamp Adds AI Avatars of Real Instructors

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Harvard Business School's startup bootcamp, Foundry, now uses AI avatars modeled on its own instructors to coach founders through practice pitches and mock board meetings. The program costs $699 and treats the AI avatars as a supplement to human mentorship rather than a replacement. It's a concrete example of AI moving from chatbot Q&A into structured, repeated skills training.

What's happening

According to TechCrunch, Harvard Business School's Foundry program has introduced AI avatars built to resemble and sound like its real instructors. Participants pay $699 to join, and during the bootcamp they interact with these avatars while rehearsing startup pitches and simulating board meetings.

The avatars aren't simple text chatbots. They're designed to run through realistic scenarios — asking follow-up questions during a pitch, pushing back like a skeptical board member — and then give feedback on delivery and content.

Context: why this is happening now

Pitch coaching has always been a bottleneck in entrepreneurship education. A single instructor or mentor can only sit through so many rehearsal rounds, and founders often need repeated practice before a pitch feels natural under pressure.

As generative AI models have gotten better at real-time voice and video interaction, universities and accelerators have started testing whether AI can absorb some of that repetitive coaching load. Harvard's move is notable mainly because of the institution's visibility — it signals that AI-based coaching tools are moving past early pilots into programs with real tuition and real outcomes attached.

Why it matters

For entrepreneurship education broadly, this is a test case for how much of

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