The True Ventures Fellowship: A Summer for Building AI Fluency

The True Ventures Fellowship in 2026 has a new, rooted goal: not just to place talented students at great companies in our portfolio, but to send them back into the world with accelerated AI fluency. The gap between people who build at the frontier with AI and people who don't is widening fast — and the window for developing those skills naturally, rather than retrofitting them later, is closing.

For True Fellows, this summer is the right moment to be at a company that builds AI-natively from day one. Not bolting AI onto existing workflows; building with it as the default from the start. That's the environment for this summer’s cohort.

Adaptable Beats Credentialed

When hiring for this year’s fellowship, we weren't looking for people who already know every AI tool. We were looking for people who learn fast, work well with others, and are motivated to work at a real company doing meaningful work. What we found: high-EQ, adaptable, curious people who are eager to grow — exactly the profile that thrives in a startup environment.

Weekly building sprints give the fellows frequent opportunities to learn hands-on until AI workflows become second nature. And by mid-summer, reaching for these tools won’t be a requirement. It’ll just be how they work. 

The Work Starts Here

That same philosophy shapes how True operates internally, too. We rebuilt our selection process for this year’s cohort with a custom candidate screening tool to manage first-round review at scale — 357 applicants, evaluated with more consistency and less noise than any previous year.

And over the past five months, we've run three full-day builder events alongside True Founders and their networks. These were working sessions where people show up to get their hands dirty in new tools they’ve never tried before, not just discuss them. 

Starting next week, and every Tuesday this summer, that continues with weekly Scrappy Sessions, led by Keerthi Nalabotu, our AI Builder in Residence. Our fellows will join these weekly sessions and hear from community members who are creating new channels of value inside high-growth companies using what they’ve learned. 

We're building AI fluency inside the firm the same way we're building it inside the fellowship — by doing the work, repeatedly, in community.

A Direct Line to Strong Talent

Finding people who are curious, adaptable, and motivated to be at an early-stage AI company is genuinely hard. The True Ventures Fellowship creates a direct path between that kind of talent and the True companies that need it most.

Every fellow placed this summer has the potential to become a full-time hire or a future founder. That talent pipeline is part of the True Platform and how we support team growth. And that’s not hypothetical; 250+ True Fellowship alumni are proof this pipeline works.

Meet the 2026 Fellows

Welcome, Greeshma Doppalapudi, Shantanu Deshpande, Oscar Mendoza-Oliva, Pear Chotbunwong, Thu Pham, Charlotte Woo, Sophia Moloo, Aditya Pawar, Alexander Knight, Thalia Ruxin, and Fredre'Oni Terrado to the newest cohort of the True Ventures Fellowship. We can't wait to see what you build this summer.

Sign up here to be notified with details about our summer 2027 program.