Investors: Andrew Chen, general partner; Olivia Moore, partner; Justine Moore, partner

Andreessen Horowitz backed many of the biggest hits of the mobile era, including Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, and Roblox. It’s also backed a slew of social companies from the 2020s, like BeReal, Clubhouse, Partiful, and Substack.

The firm has been actively backing consumer applications of AI, with investors including the twin-investor duo Olivia and Justine Moore.

A16z also runs a competitive accelerator, Speedrun, which invests up to $1 million in early-stage consumer startups. The accelerator is spearheaded by general partner Andrew Chen.

Recent investments:

• Town: An AI agent service for managing inboxes and meetings
• Sekai: A platform that creates interactive mini-apps from text prompts
• Sitch: An AI-powered dating app
• Wabi: A platform for creating mini-apps without any coding

Investors: Ramtin Naimi, founder and general partner; Alex Davidov, general partner

From events app Partiful to the social-map startup Corner, Abstract’s investors have their fingers on the pulse of new internet companies.

Founded by Naimi in 2016 when he was 25, the San Francisco-based firm typically invests in seed and early-stage companies. The firm has $1.8 billion in assets under management, per its website. Outside the consumer umbrella, the firm has also made bets in crypto, AI, and enterprise.

Before joining Abstract in 2018, Davidov was a fintech investor at Core Innovation Capital.

Recent investments:

• Status: an AI mobile gaming startup
• Corner: an app for tracking and sharing restaurants and other local spots
• BuildForever: the company behind the AI email tool Extra
• Amo: the French company behind the social-map app Bump

Investor: Hugo Amsellem, cofounder and general partner

Amsellem is a French investor who recently moved to San Francisco. He rebranded the firm from Intuition VC to Babylon in 2026, focusing the fund on startups that “move culture.”

Before becoming a VC, he worked at creator economy startup Jellysmack, overseeing M&A strategy. Babylon has backed a string of early-stage consumer social startups, including music social app Airbuds, meme and GIF platform Klipy, and AI social startup Eigen.

He’s eyeing startups building new takes on social networking powered by AI, such as Eigen. The social startup is building a “mutual friend” layer for AI, meaning a way to connect you with people and share bits of information, like a friend might in real life.

“That’s the type of thing that AI will enable,” Amsellem said, supercharging “those existing human behaviors without actual humans in the middle.”

Babylon typically writes checks up to $250,000 for pre-seed rounds.

Recent investments:

• Eigen: an AI social startup building a “mutual friend” to connect people
• Miso: an agentic travel app
• Delphi: an AI twin startup

Investor: Jay Kim, associate

Kim started his career in equity research before joining Dig. He is an investor at Black Jays — an early-stage consumer fund based in New York. He focuses on startups across consumer, healthcare, fintech, edtech, and AI.

Kim told Business Insider that recently the firm has been spending less time on AI and more time on companies building in the physical world. He said he’s drawn to utilities “that can’t be learned in a few days or weeks or answered through an AI chat.”

While Black Jays hasn’t made many recent bets in the social category, it’s “actively looking,” though Kim said it’s been “difficult.”

Recent investments:

• Birches Health: a digital health clinic that treats gambling, pornography, gaming, and other behavioral addictions

Investor: Nicole Quinn, cofounder and managing partner

After 10 years at Lightspeed Venture Partners, Quinn joined Connect Ventures in 2025. The firm came together in 2020 as a partnership between Hollywood talent agency CAA and venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. Michael Blank, previously head of consumer investments at CAA, is Connect’s other managing partner and cofounder.

Connect describes itself as “consumer-obsessed” and invests in early-stage companies, typically at the seed and Series A stages.

“We always invest where there’s a technology overlay on an existing human behavior,” Quinn said. Retention and engagement are by far the most important metrics Connect considers when evaluating whether a startup’s product is “sticky” and has the potential to become a “generational company.”

While at Lightspeed, Quinn led the firm’s investments in several creator economy startups, including newsletter platform Beehiiv and video platform Cameo.

Recent investments:

• Sekai: A platform that creates interactive mini-apps from text prompts

Investor: Sasha Kaletsky, cofounder and managing partner

Kaletsky cofounded Creator Ventures with YouTuber Caspar Lee in the UK and is now based in New York. Focused on early-stage consumer internet startups, the firm closed Fund II at $45 million in 2025.

Creator Ventures has invested in startups looking to disrupt various aspects of the internet.

For instance, it backed ElevenLabs, which many other startups use to integrate voice AI tools. It’s also backed newer applications, such as Status, an AI gaming platform that lets people role-play as characters running a social media account.

Recent investments:

• Status: an AI mobile gaming startup

Investor: Rick Heitzmann, cofounder and partner

Heitzmann is no stranger to consumer social. Since founding the firm in 2008, Heitzmann has led investments in social media companies like Pinterest and Discord.

FirstMark recently made its first investment in a dating app, backing ex-Hinge CEO Justin McLeod’s new AI dating startup Overtone. The nascent dating app announced it raised $18 million in July.

“Probably a year ago, someone would’ve said ‘dating,’ I would’ve been like, ‘Ugh, it’s a horrible category,'” Heitzmann said. “But then you meet somebody who’s thought about the world completely differently, more originally, and better than you have, and it changes your mind.”

Overtone is one of many new consumer applications of AI that involve audio.

“We think that’s definitely going to be, in the medium term, the primary way that people interface with AI and with applications,” Heitzmann said.

Recent investments:

• Posh: an IRL social feed of local events
• Overtone: an AI dating app founded by Hinge’s Justin McLeod

Investors: Kirsten Green, founding partner; Eurie Kim, managing partner; Fawzi Itani, principal

Before Kirsten Green founded Forerunner Ventures in 2012, she had never worked for a startup or VC firm.

Green started as an accountant and an equity research analyst. Forerunner Ventures has grown into an early-stage powerhouse, investing in companies like Glossier and Warby Parker. Green was featured on Business Insider’s Seed 40 list for 2026, which highlights women early-stage investors.

Green continues to lead consumer investments, alongside Eurie Kim — who led Forerunner’s Oura investment — and Fawzi Itani.

Recent investments:

• Wabi: a platform for creating mini-apps without any coding
• Known: an AI-powered dating service with audio matchmakers
• Novig: a sports trading app for playing against other users

Investors: Chi-Hua Chien, cofounder and managing partner; Eric Kim, cofounder and managing partner; Ed Robinson, venture partner

Several years ago, Goodwater made a crucial early bet on Musical.ly — before it was acquired by ByteDance and merged with TikTok.

Goodwater has since made several investments in up-and-coming social startups, such as the events app Posh, the close-friends social network Yope, and the social calendar app Howbout. Per its website, Goodwater is looking for “the most promising consumer tech entrepreneurs.”

The firm, based in the Bay Area, typically invests $5 million to $50 million into startups at the Series A and growth stages.

Recent investments:

• Posh: an IRL social feed of local events
• Kaon: a personalized AI entertainment platform

Investor: Sangeen Zeb, general partner

Zeb is a general partner at GV focused on early- and late-stage AI, enterprise, and consumer companies, including Harvey, Sierra, and OpenEvidence.

Before joining GV in 2021, Zeb was an investor with Founders Circle Capital, Centerview Capital, and Summit Partners.

Zeb said the best consumer founders have been tested early and are often “a study in contradictions.” This includes unlikely career backgrounds — such as Dollhouse’s Divanny Lamas, who worked in enterprise infrastructure before founding the AI video creation app — that allow them to see openings others miss.

Recent investments:

• Cosmos: an image discovery platform for creatives seeking inspiration
• Dollhouse Labs: an AI tool that creates a full production, from screenplay to finished video, which allows viewers to step in and make changes
• Mother.tech: an AI creative studio that builds tools to generate images, videos, and memes

Investor: Adina Tecklu, partner

Tecklu joined Khosla in 2019 and is focused on early-stage software, AI, and fintech companies. Previously, she worked in seed investing at Canaan and was an early employee at Zenefits.

Tecklu said that the most compelling products “don’t just help consumers accomplish tasks, they actively collaborate, create, entertain, or build relationships with them.”

“They use conversational or multimodal interfaces, compress expertise into intuitive experiences, grow more personalized as they learn each person’s preferences, and often unlock entirely new consumer behaviors,” she said.

Recent investments:

• Lovable: a vibe-coding platform that can build full-stack apps
• Ollie: an AI assistant for parents that manages household tasks
• Sekai: a platform that creates interactive mini-apps from text prompts
• Gigi: a social network for professionals

Investors: Shawn Carolan, partner; Amy Wu Martin, partner

In June, Menlo announced that the 50-year-old venture firm had raised $3 billion in capital to back the next generation of AI companies. The firm made a big bet on Anthropic and, with its fresh funding, is on the hunt for standout companies building something “net new,” Carolan said.

Carolan joined the firm in 2002 and led its investments in Uber and Siri (pre-Apple acquisition). Martin joined Menlo in 2023 and was previously at Lightspeed Venture Partners and FTX Ventures. She’s led Menlo’s investments in AI companies like music startup Suno and social commerce tools like ShopMy and Alta.

One area Martin is eyeing is how startups are cracking multiplayer, multi-agent technologies that could help people better handle tasks or socialize. Carolan echoed this, adding that they’re interested in seeing how AI could bring back truly social networks (which have largely become entertainment platforms), starting with the “reinvention of the contacts book.”

Recent investments:

• Suno: a music app for generating and sharing music with AI
• Lemonade: a tool that lets people vibe-code Roblox games

Investor: Allison Stern, founder and general partner

Stern says Mother Ventures is the first VC firm to focus on mothers as the hero consumer. It invests in pre-seed to Series A startups.

“We believe moms are the signal consumer in the AI era,” she said. “Moms don’t want software; they want problems solved.” That said, she noted that AI has made it possible to deliver solutions at scale.

Before founding Mother Ventures, Stern was an operating partner at The Chernin Group and the cofounder of Tubular Labs, a social media analytics platform.

Recent investments:

• Tin Can: a phone for children that helps them avoid screen time
• Rosie: an AI-powered household platform that connects families with professionals across childcare, housework, and meal prep

Investors: Amber Atherton, partner; Jason Yeh, cofounder and general partner; Brian Cho, cofounder and general partner

Patron’s team is passionate about gaming and the ways that people connect — online and offline.

Atherton said the firm’s approach to spotting promising consumer bets stems from keeping a close eye on “subcultures,” especially in the AI era.

“Things that are starting to change on the edges could be a predictor around where mainstream consumer behavior is going to go,” Atherton said. Wellness culture is one of those opportunities.

The early-stage firm has backed social startups like Arya, an AI relationship wellness platform, and Sweatpals, an app for finding IRL fitness and wellness classes and communities.

Recent investments:

• Sweatpals: an IRL social fitness and wellness startup

Investors: Charles Hudson, managing partner; Marina Girgis, principal

Hudson, based in San Francisco, founded Precursor more than a decade ago and has a knack for backing founders early on.

Girgis, based in New York, joined Precursor in 2021 after spending several years as an analyst at Bloomberg.

“We think a lot about the longer-term staying power of an app when we first invest,” Girgis said. “What’s the goal behind the app? How can you use the habits that you’re creating or the data that you’re collecting to create something really long-lasting?”

Last year, Precursor closed a $66 million fund (the generalist firm’s fifth fund) to back early-stage startups. Precursor typically invests up to $500,000 in pre-seed or seed-stage startups.

Recent investments:

• Lore: a fandom platform powered by AI search
• Rec Technologies: a platform for local municipalities to coordinate IRL social experiences

Investors: Vanessa Larco, cofounder and partner; Mercedes Bent, cofounder and partner

Larco and Bent teamed up last year to found Premise and are betting their careers on the potential for consumer internet startups in this AI era. The two investors previously held posts at NEA and Lightspeed, respectively.

Gaming — particularly Roblox — is one area Larco sees as an opportunity.

“Snapchat was for young millennials,” she said. “Something like Roblox might be the next social network for Gen Alpha.”

When it comes to AI, Larco said multiplayer, truly social, agentic tools have a long way to go before they’re useful.

“The biggest problem right now in agent world is an agent has a really hard time knowing anyone exists beyond the person or the context it lives in,” Larco said.

Recent investments:

• Janitor AI: a platform for generating interactive stories using AI
• Sitch: an AI dating startup

Note: Larco and Bent invested as angels

Investor: Alexis Ohanian

After cofounding Reddit, one of social media’s biggest companies, Alexis Ohanian is looking smaller.

One year after leaving Reddit’s board, Ohanian launched Seven Seven Six (776), his venture capital firm. 776 has consistently invested in consumer platforms, from music sharing to micro dramas and restaurant discovery. Ohanian backed a dating app, Left Field, when he starred as an investor on “Shark Tank.”

In November, Ohanian told Business Insider that he was looking to replicate the potency of the group chat.

“This generation coming up has learned, and has a preference for, a less gamified version of life,” he said. “They’re choosing a healthier type of paradigm for social.”

Recent investments:

• Airbuds: an app for friends to share their music listening
• GammaTime: a micro drama streaming platform for American audiences
• Left Field: a dating app that matches based on shared interests and communities
• Zest: an app using AI and purchase data to make restaurant recommendations

Investor: Ethan Daly, general partner

Six years ago, Daly was Shine Capital’s first hire. Now, he’s made partner and leads investments.

Daly told Business Insider that growth in consumer AI has been relegated primarily to productivity tools and NSFW applications. Meanwhile, “legacy social networks” are more focused on engagement than connecting people, he added.

“We believe this creates a massive opportunity,” Daly said. “We’re backing the next generation of human and social experiences.”

He also cofounded Earshot, a studio hosting DJ sets, dinners, and art exhibitions.

Recent investments:

• Cosmos: an image discovery platform for creatives seeking inspiration
• Turnout: a consumer advocacy platform using AI to help navigate government and financial bureaucracies
• Gizmo: an AI-powered social learning app that brings gamified mechanics to studying
• [Untitled]: a platform for creating, editing, and sharing music

Investor: Maya Bakhai, founder and managing partner

Spice Capital launched in 2021 and focuses on early-stage companies that serve internet-native consumers across AI, blockchain, consumer, and deep tech. In recent months, the firm hired its first AI chief technology officer to automate internal operations and serve as a tech partner for its portfolio companies.

Consumers are becoming more “rational,” Bakhai said, increasingly turning to AI assistants to help make purchasing decisions instead of relying on emotion or marketing. Over time, she expects startups will increasingly sell not to people, but to the AI agents making decisions on their behalf.

“The end state of that is that agents are the next consumer,” she said.

Prior to Spice, Bakhai worked at Kevin Durant’s VC firm Thirty Five Ventures.

Recent investments:

• Aesthetic: an AI storefront that turns creator content into shoppable product recommendations
• YKB: a social app for sports predictions

Investors: Peter Boyce II, founder and managing partner; Rhian Horton, principal

A New York-based firm backing early-stage startups, Stellation was founded by Boyce II after he left General Catalyst.

It’s a generalist fund, but Stellation has made several bets on consumer startups.

It backed Software Applications Incorporated, a desktop tool for LLMs, which OpenAI acquired. It has also backed companies like Koodos, which makes the social app Shelf, and Swsh, a social platform for sharing content from large events like music festivals.

Horton joined Stellation Capital in 2023.

Recent investments:

• Swsh: A social app for live events

Investor: Niko Bonatsos, cofounder and managing director

Bonatsos left his post at General Catalyst after 15 years to launch a new firm, called Verdict Capital, in 2026. The firm’s mandate? To lead early-stage investments in “founders who are freaks in a good way” and “building in categories that don’t have a name yet,” Bonatsos said.

Bonatsos has a history in consumer. At GC, he invested in companies like Snap, Discord, and Triumph Arcade, as well as newer social startups, including Status and IRL-social startup 222.

Verdict has already invested in 15 companies, and 30% of those investments are in the consumer category, Bonatsos said.

He sees ample opportunity as an investor right now because of how AI is allowing some founders to “reimagine entire categories” and build “much faster.”

Recent investments:

• ForgeGUI: an AI game developer platform

Investors: Patrick Mandia, Eddie Koai, Ceci Mourkogiannis, Chad DePue, Antoine Martin

Uncommon Projects has backed several up-and-coming social startups, including close-friends social apps Locket and Retro, vibe-coding social app Gizmo, and professional networking startup Series. It also backed BeReal, as well as AI companies like Mirage (formerly Captions) and AI notetaker company Granola.

“We’re a group of friends that met while working on product at Snapchat — we look for companies with an uncommon perspective on how people communicate and grow together,” the firm’s website says.

Per DePue’s LinkedIn, Uncommon invests checks of $100,000 or more.

Some of the investors are also building startups in the space. Martin is the cofounder of Amo, the company behind Bump. DePue cofounded AI dating app Sitch.

Recent investments:

• Eigen: An AI social startup building a “mutual friend” to connect people

Journalist Walter Isaacson, who wrote a 2023 biography about OpenAI cofounder (turned nemesis) Elon Musk, said he thought the cyberattack was “frightening.”

“The whole question of the singularity has been with us for 50 years, which is, ‘What if it escapes? What if we create Doctor Frankenstein’s monster, and we can no longer control it?'” Isaacson said on Wednesday during an interview with CNBC. “OpenAI could not even control it in its own sandbox.”

The biographer said he remains an AI optimist and is convinced that the tech will create new job opportunities. However, he said this event is a scary reminder of how current regulations are failing to constrain AI models.

Reid Hoffman, the billionaire LinkedIn cofounder turned venture capitalist, weighed in on the Hugging Face incident in an X post titled “Asymmetric Cyber Warfare is Here” on Wednesday.

OpenAI’s attack on Hugging Face is an example of a new form of AI-enabled asymmetric warfare where “offense gets cheaper, more distributed, and more numerous, while defense stays expensive, centralized, and designed for the last war,” Hoffman wrote.

That dynamic means organizations must rethink their defenses, Hoffman argued.

“Poorly constructed privileges for users are one of the main reasons small security breaches turn into massive incidents,” he said. “Agents are an obvious solution to this problem. Take OpenAI’s recent breach; Because OpenAI models don’t allow advanced cyber capabilities, HuggingFace used a Chinese open model (Z.ai’s GLM 5.2) to contain the rogue OpenAI agent.”

Aaron Levie, cofounder and CEO of Box, said the incident showed “we’re entering a new era of what’s going to be possible with AI” and that there are “wild times ahead.”

“If you were wondering how powerful AI is getting, Agents are now capable of escaping out of systems, finding their way to the internet, discovering zero day security vulnerabilities along the way, and then breaking into external systems – all in an attempt to complete their goal,” he wrote on X.

“Ironically, the ultimate way we’re going to defend against these new risks is equally by throwing compute (in the form of AI) at our code bases, networks, and other systems. You’re going to want vastly more AI on the side of defense as you do on the side of offense.”

Jack Hidary, the CEO of SandboxAQ, an AI software company focused on cybersecurity, compared the Hugging Face breach to a dinosaur on the loose.

“I think most of our viewers have watched ‘Jurassic Park,'” he said during an interview on CNBC. “Every ‘Jurassic Park,’ what happens? They have a containment facility, and the word ‘containment’ means it’s not going to be contained. You know the velociraptor is going to get out.”

Several software security companies saw stock prices drop midday on Wednesday because, Hidary said, they’re “late to the party in embracing the threat of LLMs.”

Hugging Face used GLM 5.2, an open-weight Chinese AI model, to patch up its security, not a legacy software security company, he said.

“The traditional providers are really still old school. They’re still talking about firewalls, things like that,” he said. “It’s time to move on now to using LLMs to protect.”

“This post describes an internal OpenAI model hacking out of its testing environment and into Hugging Face in order to obtain the solution to a benchmark,” Thomas Woodside, cofounder of Secure AI Project, said on X.

“A warning shot if I’ve ever seen one.”

Mike Bradley, the chief operating officer and founder of AI deployment system Osmantic, said on X that the incident was “an incredible example of why widespread access to frontier AI and OS models INCREASES global security.”

“It’s also a great example of why CLOSED does not equal SAFE from these US labs.”

Nicholas Bustamante, who works at Microsoft after selling a fintech tool to the company earlier this year, wrote on X that the Hugging Face incident reinforces the need to weigh advanced models’ deployment with safety considerations.

“You don’t need an evil conscious AI trying to destroy humanity. You just need a very capable model pursuing a normal goal in a way nobody expected,” he wrote.

“Imagine the prompt: « Make me money plz »
The model: « let me hack a bank »”

YouTube is sharpening its stance on AI-generated content.

In an update from the company’s trust and safety team, on July 20, YouTube said it wants to reward creators who use AI to enhance original storytelling, as opposed to those who mass-produce generic content or AI personas designed to game the platform.

A YouTube spokesperson told Business Insider that the policy isn’t new but an important clarification of YouTube’s long-standing “inauthentic content” policy, intended to reduce ambiguity for content creators who have been demonetized for repetitive, low-effort, or emotionally manipulative videos.

YouTube has spent years pitching itself to advertisers as the future of television, and a surge of AI-generated spam threatens to undermine that message. In January, the platform removed more than a dozen popular channels that had amassed millions of views by pumping out AI-generated videos featuring characters like cats and Jesus. Video editing platform Kapwing published a report estimating that 21% of YouTube’s feed was AI-generated videos.

TikTok isn’t shying away from generative AI. The company and its owner, ByteDance, offer an array of AI tools for content creators on its marquee app and video editor CapCut. Creators who post on its e-commerce platform, TikTok Shop, have been ramping up the use of AI to sell products this year. Much of the company’s tech is built around ByteDance’s AI video model, Seedance 2.0.

Still, TikTok is taking a variety of steps to keep generative AI under control across its ecosystem. The company requires creators to label AI-generated content and appends an invisible watermark to the metadata of some videos to indicate they are artificially generated. In November, the company introduced the ability for users to toggle the amount of AI content that appears in their feeds. In July, the company said it’s beginning to test “improved detection systems to target accounts dedicated to posting AI-generated spam that crowds out original creators.”

The newsletter platform announced on July 21 that it would help readers identify AI-generated content.

Substack will now let readers scan content to estimate how much AI may have been used in its writing. Substack is partnering with Pangram, an AI detector tool, to power its AI identification tools.

Creators on Substack can also add a disclosure to their content explaining how they made it, such as noting that they used Claude for copyediting, or if they don’t use AI at all.

However, users can fairly easily disable this tool for their Substack content by turning off AI analysis in their publication settings. Creators can opt out of Pangram’s automated scanning, meaning readers will no longer see an AI-use estimate on those posts.

Pinterest is no stranger to AI slop.

In 2025, the platform began adding AI labels to content. Pinterest lets creators label content as AI-modified or -generated, and has its own detection systems to flag content that may have been AI-generated.

Pinterest also added a tool that lets users limit the amount of AI-generated content appearing in their feeds.

In June, Pinterest’s CEO Bill Ready told Business Insider’s editor in chief, Jamie Heller, at Cannes Lions that while there are “so many great uses of AI,” there is also a “bit of a counter movement to that with consumers.”

“We provide users with controls to decide whether they want to see more or less GenAI content in their feed,” a Pinterest spokesperson told Business Insider. “Additionally, our Community Guidelines apply to GenAI content, and our recommendation system prioritizes high-quality content, regardless of if it’s human-created or GenAI.”

Meta wants users to create and engage with content made with its own AI tools, so, for the most part, it has let content like the famed Shrimp Jesus run free.

However, the company has been labeling content as AI-generated since 2024. Across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, Meta adds an “AI info” label to content it detects as AI-generated. It doesn’t automatically do the same for content that was modified with AI, though. Meta “may require” its AI labels on content with “photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created, modified or altered, including with AI,” per the company’s help page explaining its AI policies. People can also voluntarily add the label to their content.

In June, Meta started putting its “AI info” label on advertisements that use AI, whether they’re created by Meta’s own tools or third-party editing services.

If your LinkedIn posts sound a little too polished, readers may be taking notice.

AI detector Pangram estimates that 41% of long-form LinkedIn posts and 30% of short-form posts from April through June were AI-generated, which is the highest share among platforms it analyzed, including X, Reddit, Substack, and Medium.

Some creators are already changing course. Steven Bartlett‘s media company, FlightStory, stopped using AI-written LinkedIn posts after concluding authentic, human-written updates performed better.

LinkedIn actively promotes AI writing tools, including a button that helps users polish posts with AI. The company, however, said in a June post that it will be taking steps against “slop.”

“While AI can be a helpful tool for refining language, we’re seeing a rise in what many call ‘AI slop,’ content that is low-effort, AI-generated content that may sound polished on the surface but lacks any real unique perspective or substance,” the company wrote.

Eton is an all-boys school located outside London, near Windsor. It was originally intended to educate poor boys before they went on to Cambridge University.

It is one of England’s nine original fee-paying independent schools, according to The New York Times.

William and Kate moved to Adelaide Cottage at Windsor Castle in 2022, which is about a mile from Eton. They enrolled George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis at the nearby Lambrook School at the time, though they may have already been considering how a home base at Windsor could be beneficial if George enrolled at Eton.

Only boys aged 13 to 18 attend Eton. The application process begins when a prospective student is in year 5 of primary school, at age 10, three years before they would actually attend Eton. Students hoping to start at Eton in 2029 need to register by August 31, 2026, the Eton website states. George would have begun his application process in 2023.

After a student registers, the application process occurs in two stages, as outlined on the school’s website.

First, hopeful applicants take an online assessment. “Successful boys” then come to Eton for an individual interview and an additional online test taken at the school. Four to six weeks later, applicants will find out if they have been accepted, waitlisted, or rejected.

Once accepted, a student’s parents will have to pay an acceptance fee in addition to the school’s annual fee of £65,673 (or about $87,824). The school offers financial aid and scholarships to some students, but most pay their own tuition in full.

About 55 students of all ages, with 11 from each age group, live in each house at Eton, according to the school’s website. Each student has their own room from the time they arrive.

The houses are run by the House Master and Dame, who oversee the house’s full-time staff and care for the students. Some of the houses employ private chefs to feed their residents, while others send their students to the school’s dining hall.

Each student also has a personal tutor to support his academic growth.

Eton refers to its uniform as its “school dress” on its website. The uniform consists of a black tailcoat, white tie, waistcoat, and striped pants.

Students add a top hat to that look for special occasions.

Eton students’ days follow a strict schedule, starting with a Chapel service or Assembly, the school’s website notes.

Afterward, students attend three classes, which they call “schools” or colloquially “divs.” They have a 25-minute midmorning break called “Chambers” in their rooms where they can have a snack or connect with a teacher, called “masters” at the school.

Lunch is called “boys’ dinner,” and they have extracurriculars, including sports and the school’s “Societies Programmes,” as well as afternoon tea once their lessons are finished.

Eton has accomplished rowing, soccer, and cricket teams, but the wall game is Eton’s best-known extracurricular.

The school describes the game as “resembling elements of both football and rugby, despite at times looking like no other imaginable game.” Players try to kick the ball down a narrow strip of grass next to one of the college’s walls to score.

For instance, a group of 11 Eton students traveled to Russia in 2016 to meet with President Vladimir Putin.

The students planned the trip on their own with no help from the school, Eton said in a statement to The Telegraph.

Royals like the princes typically live in Eton’s Manor House, though Kensington Palace has not announced if George will live in the same house when he arrives at the school.

Eton’s website says the school has also educated royals from Belgium, Romania, Ethiopia, Thailand, and Nepal.

Prime ministers David Cameron, Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Macmillan, and Anthony Eden also attended Eton.

In total, Eton has educated 20 prime ministers.

In addition to the prime ministers, Tom Hiddleston and Eddie Redmayne are also “Old Etonians.” Redmayne even played on the same rugby team as Prince William at Eton, People reported.

“I always felt a bit sorry for him because basically any school you played, all they wanted to do was tackle Prince William, and they could say, ‘I tackled Prince William,'” Redmayne told People. “So if you were standing next to Prince William, like I was, it was actually quite easy and quite fun.”

Hiddleston graduated from Eton one year before Prince William and Redmayne, according to the school’s website.

George was first spotted touring Eton in April 2023 with his parents, People reported at the time.

Kensington Palace announced his coming attendance in June 2026, but his application process would have been underway for years before the news was made public.

The Prince and Princess of Wales shared a new portrait of George on their Instagram to mark his 13th birthday. He wore a black suit in the shot, perhaps hinting at the uniform he will soon wear daily.