One full academic year of public tuition
1,061€
uripont presents
Request for Next Gen Fund support, to attend the Silicon Valley Fellowship Summer 2026.
I am Oriol Pont, and this page is a short overview of why I am asking the Next Gen Fund to fully cover the minimum viable cost of attending the Silicon Valley Fellowship. It should take no more than a couple of minutes to read.
I am currently a master's student in AI in Milan, as part of an Erasmus exchange that is being self-funded. Given this, I am not in a financial position to cover the costs of the fellowship, not even the down payment, for at least the foreseeable future.
Silicon Valley has been the heart of the technological frontier for the past half-century. For someone building a career in tech, having been there is a meaningful milestone, and the fellowship is a unique chance to make it happen. I think my situation and profile are a good example of the kind of case that the Next Gen Fund is meant to support.
Milan
San Francisco
Barcelona
_
Economic Affordability
The fellowship is a compelling opportunity, but self-funding it does not make sense in my situation.
What 4,000€ means, in my context
With the budgeted amount for the end-to-end cost of attending the fellowship, these are the kinds of things I could do instead, in my current economic context. The point is to give a sense of the scale of the ask in terms of what it would mean for me to cover it for someone like myself.
One month living abroad for advanced master-level study
833€
One month of pro AI tooling usage
100€
One 3-month public-transport pass in Barcelona
42€
One dinner out with loved ones (family or friends)
20€
Barcelona versus San Francisco
I study in Barcelona and live nearby (in fact, commuting 1h 30min each way, living in my parent's basement to save on rent). The fellowship is in San Francisco, which is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Given that I don't currently have the means to cover the cost of attending, I wanted to give a sense of how much of a financial stretch it would be for me to wait and save up for it during the following months or years, and how out-of-scope it is relative to the economic context I come from.
Saving 20% after rent
Saving between 8 and 21 months of salary for a five-day experience is probably not the most rational thing to do, even if it is genuinely enriching and potentially life-changing. I expect the unexpected, but I also want to be realistic about the financial commitment that attending the fellowship would require from me.
Merit And Exceptional Fit
A strong technical and academic profile.
Academic
2 degrees + Erasmus
CS and Mathematical Engineering in Data Science at UPF. Erasmus semester at Politecnico di Milano, taking up to PhD-level courses in Advanced Computer Architectures, GPUs, DL/RL, Robotics,...
Side projects
Building since I was 12
Many publicly available on GitHub, with the list ever-expanding. I build things.
Final Ask
So, would you
take the ticket?