{
  "id": 4335016,
  "title": "Harvard clones 7 of its professors with AI doppelgangers, sells access to them for $699",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/30/harvard-clones-7-of-its-professors-with-ai-doppelgangers-sells-access",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-08-30T03:03:28.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "VnExpress International",
    "slug": "vnexpress-international",
    "url": "https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/education/harvard-clones-7-of-its-professors-with-ai-doppelgangers-sells-access-to-them-for-699-5115089.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Since its launch in April, Harvard's HBS Foundry program has welcomed about 760 participants, who use it to refine startup ideas into investor pitches over eight weeks. The program combines Harvard Business School content with AI agents trained on specific faculty members' work. Participants practice investor pitches, sales calls, and board meetings in simulated video calls. After completing Foundry, top candidates can compete for up to $100,000 at Foundry Catalyst in 2027.\n\nWhile not a degree program, HBS Foundry carries no academic credit. An MBA at Harvard costs $84,760 per year in 2026-27, and the school enrolled 943 students in its MBA Class of 2027. Harvard built the AI avatars using HeyGen, an AI video company. Faculty participated voluntarily, contributing their expertise in venture capital, business-model design, board dynamics, and startup strategy. The seven cloned instructors have backgrounds in these areas.\n\nFaculty programmed the AI agents to resist flattering responses, according to Tom Eisenmann, a faculty co-chair of the project. Eisenmann noted that few startup ideas succeed on the first attempt, and one founder spent 10 hours refining his pitch. The school caps Category I grades at 15% to 20% of a first-year section, assigning the lowest 10% to Category III. Faculty cannot request changes to these grade distributions.\n\nDuring testing, a reporter from the New York Times pitched a ridiculous banana-delivery startup to a digital version of Jeff Bussgang, a venture firm co-founder and lecturer at Harvard. The AI avatar held a fixed smile and repeated a single shoulder movement, which Bussgang found unsettling but effective for his students. Harold Solomon, a principal at Georgia Tech's Quadrant-i commercialization program, incorporated Foundry into a 12-week workshop for doctoral students and faculty, running 20-30 meetings weekly. Pranav Sultania, a mechanical engineering doctoral candidate at Boston University, used the avatars to refine his startup, Magnesis Robotics, which develops a squid-inspired electromagnetic propulsion system for underwater vehicles.\n\nOther institutions, like Imperial Business School and Georgia Tech, have created digital twins of professors and built avatars for online courses. Stanford lecturer and Workera founder Kian Katanforoosh acknowledged AI's potential to answer unlimited questions but emphasized its inability to know students as individuals or bear responsibility for outcomes. One of the cloned Harvard professors, Shikhar Ghosh, stated that the goal isn't to replace him.",
  "summary": "Harvard Business School is selling an eight-week entrepreneurship course for US$699 built around AI video avatars of seven of its faculty members.",
  "key_points": [
    "Harvard cloned 7 professors' AI doppelgangers for teaching",
    "Faculty volunteered to create AI avatars using HeyGen",
    "AI avatars resist flattering responses to teach realistic skills"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}