A Stanford University computer science course featuring guest lectures from some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent executives has drawn both a packed enrollment and public criticism in 2026. CS 153, nicknamed “AI Coachella” by its detractors, has filled all 500 available seats, left dozens of students on a waitlist, and attracted thousands more viewers watching lectures posted on YouTube.
The course is co-taught by Anjney Midha, a former Andreessen Horowitz general partner, and Michael Abbott, Apple’s former VP of engineering for cloud services. Its guest lecturer lineup includes 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. On April 22, 2026, Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Ben Horowitz spoke at the class. It is the fourth year Midha and Abbott have taught some version of the course at Stanford’s Palo Alto campus.
The class focuses on frontier AI systems, a subject many undergraduate computer science courses cover only briefly. In the first lecture, Midha discussed the computing infrastructure behind AI models and argued — using internal pricing charts from his venture firm AMP — that Nvidia H100 chip prices have increased over the last 90 days, countering the idea that AI chips are becoming cheaper over time.
Midha and Abbott recently launched AMP, a venture firm that provides AI startups with capital and computing capacity. Midha disclosed at the start of the class that several guest lecturers lead companies he has invested in, including Black Forest Labs, Mistral, Sesame, and Periodic Labs.
After a screenshot of the guest lecture lineup went viral on social media, critics pushed back. Anthropic researcher Jesse Mu posted on X: “Protip for Stanford undergrads: beware the classes with guest speaker lineups that read like AI coachella. You’re basically paying $5k to listen to a live podcast series.” Stanford economics research fellow Luke Heeney noted that his functional analysis class had only three attendees on the same day, adding: “Remember to eat your veggies.”
Midha responded by leaning into the nickname. He ordered 500 T-shirts reading “I took CS 153 and all I got was AI coachella” to hand out to students. “The critics were unintentionally red teaming my system,” he said. “I was like, huh, AI Coachella? Is that a feature or a bug? That’s totally a feature. That’s product market fit.” The episode suggests the tension between traditional academic coursework and industry-access-driven education at elite universities may be sharpening as AI draws greater institutional attention.
Source: Business Latest