The Launchpad Build Cohort

AI Engineering Lab is a free, self-paced 24-week AI engineering course developed by Zorost Intelligence AI Lab. It takes learners from Python and machine learning through deep learning, LLM internals, prompt and context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation with vector search, quantization, LoRA and DPO fine-tuning, evaluation harnesses, coding-agent harnesses, AI agents, MCP, and cloud and Databricks platforms including Azure AI Foundry, Google Vertex AI, AWS Bedrock, and Databricks. The curriculum uses one continuous fictional freight-company case study. Each week pairs a concept with a runnable Python, SQL, or PySpark artifact; from Week 3 onward, the work includes a metric and an error note. The repository contains 43 runnable notebooks, publishes the full curriculum online, requires no signup or paid API key, and states that the first eight weeks require no GPU. It is MIT licensed.

AI Engineering from Scratch is a free, open-source curriculum developed by rohitg00 for learning to build and ship AI systems end to end. Its 20-phase sequence covers development tooling, mathematical and machine-learning foundations, deep learning, NLP, computer vision, generative AI, LLM applications, agent engineering, Model Context Protocol (MCP), agent skills, reinforcement learning, and related topics, with implementations in Python, TypeScript, Rust, and Julia. The repository describes 511 lessons and approximately 329 hours of material; each lesson produces a reusable artifact such as a prompt, skill, agent, or MCP server. Learners are instructed to read the lesson documentation, type and run the code from the repository root, record command evidence and outputs, and make a small change before continuing. It provides routes for complete foundations, mathematics and machine learning, production LLM applications, agent engineering, MCP, agent skills, and Claude certification preparation. The repository is distributed under the MIT license and is accompanied by a website containing the same lesson content.

Rebuild YouTube with AI is a live, hands-on cohort course from ByteByteGo about building and deploying a YouTube-like video site with AI coding tools. It covers decomposing the product into core surfaces, generating interface mockups, implementing React and Next.js pages, modeling data in Postgres, adding authentication and uploads, generating media, storing video with Cloudflare, and deploying with Vercel. The course also implements search and related videos with multimodal embeddings and pgvector, then discusses recommender-system limitations, watch-time tracking, AI-driven Playwright testing, and production workflows. Sessions are recorded, and enrollment includes course materials and access to the cohort recordings after the live course.

The Horowitz Andreessen Academy is a selective residential, project-based school in San Francisco for ambitious young builders after high school or during the first two years of college. Its educational model replaces traditional grades, tests, and homework with three components: Pursuits, in which students choose personal projects, startup ideas, or research interests; short Courses taught by technology founders and operators; and Co-ops that provide hands-on experience at partner companies. Students use AI tools and other resources to build projects, explore startup ideas, work with companies, and develop professional and people skills. The Academy is building a network of founding and hiring partners that can provide curriculum input, compute and hardware access, mentoring, co-op placements, and employment opportunities. Its announced Founding Class Fellowship is a tuition-free, one-year program beginning in fall 2027; a separate two-year program is planned but was not yet offered or enrolling at the time of the announcement.