a16z Taps AI Growth Leaders

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has announced the 65 individuals selected for its inaugural Growth Engineer Fellowship. This 8-week program aims to cultivate leaders focused on scaling AI companies.

The fellowship cohort comprises growth engineers, AI-native go-to-market strategists, and builders focused on company expansion. Thousands applied globally for a spot in the program.

Selected fellows are already driving growth at prominent AI-focused organizations. These include companies such as OpenAI, Replit, Notion, Coinbase, ElevenLabs, Perplexity, and Clay.

Many participants are recognized figures in the AI growth sector, having authored early growth playbooks. Notable names include Luke Harries from ElevenLabs and Raman Malik from Perplexity.

Other fellows are AI-native engineers leveraging technical expertise to build scalable growth engines. Vaibhav Aggarwal, contributing to OpenAI growth engineers' efforts, exemplifies this group.

The fellowship also includes individuals translating product strategy into growth systems. Alkarim Nasser at Google and Emily Gavrilenko at Cursor are among them.

The cohort spans a range of experience, from seasoned veterans to recent graduates like Diana Lim, who are already automating processes at early-stage startups.

These fellows are instrumental in architecting growth strategies for leading tech products, creating novel user engagement loops, and pushing the boundaries of growth engineering.