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https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/forget-wall-street-elite-students-are-spending-their-summers-on-startup-dreams-e7191994

Forget Wall Street. Elite Students Are Spending Their Summers on Startup Dreams.

As AI disrupts traditional career paths, these college students are skipping corporate internships for San Francisco hacker houses and incubators

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Listen

(2 min)

Leïa Ryan, Osama Radi, Hector Miranda Plaza, Nicolas Gertler and Oliver Hime conferring at the Yale Hacker House in San Francisco.

By

Tina Li

| Photography by Minh Connors for WSJ

July 5, 2026 3:09 pm ET

Princeton University student Charles Muehlberger could have accepted summer internship offers from a major tech company or a rocket engineering firm.

He decided to come to San Francisco and launch an AI startup instead. Four weeks in, Muehlberger is in Barcelona pitching potential customers.

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.

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