CS 153|Frontier Systems

Stanford University · Spring 2026

The AI and infrastructure stack is being rebuilt from the ground up, and most people only see one layer of it. This course covers the full stack, from energy and silicon to foundation models and the applications reshaping how we work, create, and discover. Each week, a leader from a different layer of the stack joins to share what they’re actually building and what they’ve learned doing it.

Instructors

Spring 2026 Speakers

  • Amin Vahdat
    Google
  • Andrej Karpathy
    Co-founder, OpenAI
  • Ashok Elluswamy
    VP Autopilot, Tesla
  • Ben Horowitz
    a16z
  • Brendan Iribe
    Sesame · ex-Oculus CEO
  • Dave Baszucki
    Roblox
  • David Holz
    Midjourney
  • Garry Tan & Diana Hu
    Y Combinator
  • Jensen Huang
    NVIDIA
  • Liam Fedus & Dogus Cubuk
    Periodic Labs
  • Mati Staniszewski
    ElevenLabs
  • Matthew Prince
    Cloudflare
  • Michael Intrator
    CoreWeave
  • Sam Altman
    OpenAI
  • Satya Nadella
    Microsoft

Course Project

The One-Person Frontier Lab

One person with the right AI tools can now produce what once required an organization. 10 weeks. One goal: create value for the world. See how far you can scale yourself.

Details

When
Tue / Thu 12:00–1:20 PM
Where
Hewlett Teaching Center 200
Dates
Mar 30 – Jun 3, 2026 (10 weeks)
Units
3 units
Prereqs
CS110/111 (req) · CS155 (rec)
Grading
65% Attendance · 35% Project

Course Staff

Stanford
Adrian A, Ramya I, Anthony M
Contact
[email protected] · [email protected]
CA Contact
[email protected] · [email protected]

Specific dates are not shared until the day of class.