New class includes 20 entrepreneurs in biotech, AI, energy, and more
LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Thiel Foundation today named 20 individuals as the next class of Thiel Fellows. The Fellowship program, which launched in 2011, encourages talented young people with big ideas to start companies instead of attending college.
“In a world where conformity rules, these young founders are setting out to reimagine every industry they touch,” said Brian Rowen, President of The Thiel Foundation. “No goal is too ambitious; this year’s class is innovating in fields as varied as energy production, genetic testing, AI, and agriculture.”
During the two-year Fellowship program, fellows receive $100,000 and mentorship from The Thiel Foundation’s network of technology founders, investors, and scientists. The only requirement is that fellows pause their college enrollment and focus exclusively on building their technology or company.
“Young founders with radical projects know universities will only hold them back. More than a third of this year’s applicants never applied to college and instead are following their own path,” said Alex Handy, Director of the Thiel Fellowship. “Members of this year’s class are not preoccupied with chasing trends, whether in Silicon Valley or on TikTok. They are acting on concrete plans to improve the world around them.”
The new class joins 251 previous fellows. Alumni include founders of Embark, Ethereum, Figma, Luminar, OYO, and DoNotPay. Since the Fellowship’s inception, fellows have founded companies collectively worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
About the New Class
Akshaya Dinesh: San Francisco, CA
- Spellbound is building the future of email: a no-code platform to help marketing teams increase engagement by embedding interactive experiences like shopping carts, surveys, forms, and more in emails.
Alex Singer: Montreal, Quebec
- Voldex is a game studio that acquires, improves, and builds games on user-generated content game platforms Roblox and Minecraft.
Ethan Thornton: Boston, MA
- Mach Industries is pioneering a suite of defense systems to support unparalleled capability using new inventions in the hydrogen space.
Hugo Chrost: San Francisco, CA // Warsaw, Poland
- Solvemed is introducing the world’s most advanced digital phenotyping technology for brain evaluation.
Ian Michael Brock: Chicago, IL
- Dream Hustle Code is creating a three-tiered approach toward a sustainable Gen Z workforce development pipeline.
Jake Adler: Miami, FL
- Neusleep is building a next-generation wearable device that induces and improves sleep through personalized neurostimulation.
John Guibas: Palo Alto, CA
- Succinct is building a trust-minimized way for any blockchain to access Ethereum.
John McElhone: Los Angeles, CA
- CropSafe automates farm banking, monitoring, and production forecasting using AI and satellite data.
Kai Micah Mills: Salt Lake City, UT
- Cryopets is developing whole-body cryopreservation for pets.
Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran: San Francisco, CA
- Luminai’s one-click solutions streamline multi-step, manual workflows for customer service teams.
Kian Sadeghi: Brooklyn, NY
- Nucleus Genomics is a next-generation consumer genetic testing and analysis company.
Markie Wagner: Los Angeles, CA
- Delphi Labs is a frontier tech research and advisory firm with a focus on applied AI.
Michael Ioffe: Portland, OR // New York, NY
- Arist helps leading companies build skills at scale by delivering bite-sized learning via SMS, Slack, and MS Teams.
Nik Shevchenko: San Francisco, CA
- WeLoveNoCode is a no-code marketplace connecting more than 50,000 freelancers to full-time, long-term remote jobs in the most successful and fastest growing companies.
Quinn Favret: Austin, TX // New York, NY
- Tavus uses AI to programmatically generate personalized videos of you (with your voice and face) at scale.
Reiss Jones: Manchester, England
- Macro Energy is building a way to produce a cheap and accessible carbon-negative energy source.
Samarth Athreya: Burlington, Ontario // San Francisco, CA
- Axiome is pioneering single-molecule biosensors for novel drug discovery and diagnostic applications.
Sara Du: New York, NY
- Alloy is a leading integration and automation platform for commerce.
Sonny Mo: San Francisco, CA
- Bloom helps the next generation of Americans become more financially literate and build wealth.
Victor Cardenas: San Francisco, CA
- Slash lets entrepreneurs who are 13-years-old or older open a business bank account without an LLC in less than 10 minutes.
About The Thiel Foundation
The Thiel Foundation supports science, technology, and long-term thinking about the future. For more information, see www.thielfoundation.org.
To apply for the Thiel Fellowship, please click here.
Thiel Fellows are currently hiring! To see our job board, please click here.
Contacts
fellowship@torchcommunications.com
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