One intense week. Meet world-class founders and immerse yourself in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Summer 2026 · Applications open April 2026
Join the WaitlistThe San Francisco Bay Area accounts for roughly half of all global AI investment. OpenAI, Anthropic, Scale AI, Databricks, and most of the companies reshaping entire industries are within twenty miles of each other. That density isn't just capital. It's a culture, a pace, and a set of assumptions about what's possible that is genuinely difficult to absorb from the outside.
The default question in Silicon Valley isn't "where did you study?" It's "what are you building?" Ambition isn't something you moderate; it's the baseline. The feedback loops are faster. The tolerance for risk is higher. The permission to pursue an audacious idea without apologising for it is baked into every conversation.
For Cambridge AI founders, understanding that ecosystem is a competitive advantage regardless of where you end up building. The investors who fund the most ambitious AI companies are there. The founders who've navigated the research-to-product transition are there. The operators who know what breaks at scale are there. A week inside it gives you direct access to that knowledge and a network you can draw on for the rest of your career, whether you're building in Cambridge, London, San Francisco, or anywhere else.
The Cambridge alumni who've built the most globally significant tech companies share a common thread: at a critical early moment, they engaged directly with Silicon Valley, its capital, its customers, its networks. Some built there. Some built here and sold there. Some ran dual operations from day one. The shape of the bridge looked different each time. What mattered was knowing the ecosystem well enough to use it.
Demis left Cambridge with a PhD and an idea for a world-class AI research lab at a time when UK investors wouldn't take the meeting. He flew to Silicon Valley instead, where one dinner unlocked the first few million from an investor who understood the long-term bet. Google acquired DeepMind for $650M in 2014; in 2024 Demis received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold.
Cambridge Natural Sciences graduate Mike Lynch built novel pattern-recognition software in a university lab, only for UK investors to dismiss it as too academic. He went straight to Silicon Valley and found enterprise buyers who immediately understood its value. Hewlett-Packard acquired Autonomy for $11.1B in 2011, the biggest UK tech exit of its era.
In 2013, a team of Cambridge mathematicians had a radical AI approach to cybersecurity but no path to market. Poppy built the company with dual headquarters from day one: Cambridge for research and engineering, San Francisco for customers and investors. Darktrace IPO'd in 2021 at £2.5B and was acquired by Thoma Bravo for $5.3B in 2024.
Most of what gets called a "Silicon Valley experience" is tourism: panels, group tours, a lanyard. This isn't that.
The BridgeFellows week is built around direct access. Small-group and 1:1 time with AI founders who've raised from top-tier funds and hit the same walls you're about to face. Investors who write early checks into AI companies and can tell you in plain terms what they're actually looking for. Operators who've scaled AI teams from five people to five hundred and have specific, hard-won opinions about what breaks and when.
You'll visit companies that didn't exist four years ago and now have two hundred people, and see what operating at that velocity actually looks like from the inside. You'll pitch, get torn apart constructively, rebuild your thinking, and pitch again. The conversations that matter most happen in the gaps, over breakfast, after sessions, walking between buildings, and you'll be in all of them.
You'll also get a ground-level feel for what it's like to live and work inside this ecosystem: the pace, the culture, the social infrastructure around which everything operates. That firsthand calibration is something no podcast, no book, and no secondhand account can give you. It changes how you think about what you're building and where.
Cambridge produces some of the sharpest technical minds anywhere. What we're looking for is the subset who are ready to do something serious with that: founders who move fast, think clearly under uncertainty, and are already building something, even if it's early.
Current Cambridge students and alumni at any level: undergraduate, Masters, or PhD. All departments. If you're Cambridge-connected and building something serious with AI at its core, apply.
Yes, for this cohort. AI needs to be central to what you're building, not a feature, not a marketing angle. The vertical doesn't matter. The depth of AI integration does.
No. A side project, a research spin-out, an idea you're developing seriously: any of these are fine. We care about what you're building and why, not whether you've incorporated.
Yes. Apply with your co-founder(s) and mention your team in the application. We'll consider you together.
July 2026. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Exact dates confirmed with selected fellows.
No. Where you build your company is entirely your decision. Some founders who go through this week end up in San Francisco. Most don't. The point is that you leave knowing both ecosystems well enough to make that call on your own terms, and to use both, regardless of where you're based.
Show up as a peer. You're in rooms with people who've built serious companies, not as a student visiting a speaker, but as a founder they're talking to directly. Give as much to your cohort as you take.
A short-term action plan, follow-up introductions, and ongoing check-ins to make sure the week translates into concrete progress.
Applications open April 2026. Join the waitlist for priority review and early access to programme details.
Join the Waitlist