Daniel Foster
Founder & CEO
Twelve years building products in Silicon Valley. Sets the standard: a program rigorous enough for the Valley, warm enough for a nine-year-old.
About
A Silicon Valley AI education company
AI Youth Lab is built in the San Francisco Bay Area by a founding team of AI practitioners and educators. A generation of children will grow up alongside AI — we exist for the families who want their kids to build with it, not just scroll it.
The Company
Who is behind AI Youth Lab
We are a remote-first team headquartered in Silicon Valley, working across US and Asian time zones. Half of us ship AI products for a living; half of us have spent our careers teaching children. This program is what happens when those two groups design a school together.
- Headquarters
- Silicon Valley, California
- Team
- Across US · China · Korea
- DNA
- AI practitioners × educators
Founding Team
The core team
Maria Alvarez
Co-Founder & Head of Curriculum
Former international-school curriculum director. Owns the 8-week arc — every lesson, project, and rubric, re-versioned each cohort as AI evolves.
Emma Sullivan
Head of Instruction
Ten years teaching ages 9–15 in international classrooms. Leads the daily-class instructor team: hiring, training, and the teaching quality bar.
Tom Becker
AI Engineering Lead
Full-stack AI engineer. Builds the demos, starter kits, and supervised AI accounts students use every day.
Elena Rossi
Head of Admissions & Parent Success
Runs placement and the parent experience — from the first WeChat message to the Demo Day seat.
Kevin Zhang
Head of China Growth
Owns the China market: 小红书, WeChat communities, and keeping every promise compliant.
Hannah Cole
Head of Korea Market
Brings the program to Korean families — Naver, Kakao, and evening cohorts that actually fit school schedules.
Ryan Bennett
Silicon Valley Immersion Director
Designs and runs weeks 9–12 on the ground: studios, campus visits, and logistics families can trust.
Our Principles
What we believe about AI education
Practitioners over textbooks
AI changes monthly. Curricula written two years ago are already stale. Our program is shaped by people who work with these tools professionally, today.
Projects over certificates
A certificate says a child attended. A finished project says a child can build. We optimize relentlessly for the second.
Ambition with guardrails
We hold students to high standards and hold ourselves to strict safety standards: teacher-guided AI use, academic integrity, parent visibility, and privacy by default.
Honesty over hype
We don't guarantee awards, admissions, or grades — and we say so on our own FAQ page. We'd rather earn trust slowly than sell certainty we can't deliver.
Who We Serve
Families across Asia, mentors in Silicon Valley
Our students join from mainland China, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas Asian communities. Our mentors work at the frontier of AI in the United States. The program is the bridge: English-led, evening-friendly for Asian time zones, and built to a standard both sides respect.
Fall 2026 cohort — applications open
Applications are open for the next 8-week cohort.
Seats are limited by design — small groups are how real mentorship works. Apply now and our admissions team will guide you through placement.