As of 2026-10-08 Maven lists live cohorts for 'AI Evals for Engineers & PMs' (Hamel Husain, Shreya Shankar; Oct 10 to Nov 21, 2026, $4,200) and 'Systematically Improving RAG Applications' (Jason Liu; week 1 Nov 17 to 23, 2026); the original Husain/Becker 'Mastering LLMs' course is retired to a $20 recorded archive. source
Maven is a marketplace where practitioners sell their own short cohort courses, so what you are buying is a specific instructor for a few weeks, not a program with career services. The Husain/Shankar evals course ($4,200, Oct 10 to Nov 21, 2026) and Jason Liu's RAG course (November 2026 cohort) suit working engineers who already ship LLM features and want a method, while the old Mastering LLMs course now exists only as $20 recordings. Before paying, check the exact refund window for that course (Week 2 for 4-week cohorts) and whether the course page shows the guarantee badge.
The facts
| Category | AI and machine learning |
|---|---|
| Website | maven.com |
| Based | Remote · founded 2020 |
| Format | online-live, online-self-paced |
| Programs | AI Evals for Engineers & PMs (Hamel Husain, Shreya Shankar) – 4 weeks, $4,200, Systematically Improving RAG Applications (Jason Liu) – 4 weeks, async lectures plus office hours, Mastering LLMs for Developers & Data Scientists (Hamel Husain, Dan Becker) – recorded archive, $20, Hundreds of other instructor-priced cohort courses |
| Length | 4 weeks (Both flagship AI engineering courses run 4 weeks (evals: 28 live sessions, 3-5 hrs/week; RAG: 13 live sessions, prerecorded lectures plus office hours). Other Maven courses range from one-day workshops to multi-week cohorts.) verified |
| Tuition | $20 to $4,200 Maven does not set prices; each instructor does. Published examples: AI Evals for Engineers & PMs $4,200 USD (https://maven.com/parlance-labs/evals, page also advertises a 'Full Stack AI Bundle' at $2,950 early bird); Mastering LLMs recorded archive $20 (https://maven.com/parlance-labs/fine-tuning). The Jason Liu RAG course page (https://maven.com/applied-llms/rag-playbook) did not display a price to a logged-out visitor at check time; its page source carries a tiered block of $750 very-early-bird, $850 early-bird and $950 full price for a workshop listing, which could not be confirmed as the cohort price. verified |
| Financing | upfront, employer Card payment via Stripe at enrollment; 'Maven for Teams' offers 20%+ off for company purchases. Maven Satisfaction Guarantee (only on courses showing the badge): full refund through the end of Week 2 for courses of 4 weeks or more, through the midpoint for shorter courses, any time before a one-day workshop starts, and within 14 days for self-paced courses if under 25% complete; refunds go to the original payment method within 10 business days and Maven may deny repeated requests. No job guarantee. |
| Admission | open Enroll and pay; some courses list prerequisites (the RAG course asks that you have already deployed a RAG system; Python optional). |
| Stack | Python, LLM evaluation, error analysis, LLM-as-judge, RAG, embeddings fine-tuning, BM25 and hybrid search, LanceDB, synthetic data, query routing, agents |
Outcomes
This program does not publish job-placement or salary outcomes. Treat any number you hear from admissions as unverifiable.
Interview-prep depth
0 / 5
Public syllabi for the evals and RAG courses cover applied LLM engineering only; no interview modules.
Whatever the program covers, the interview itself is free to prepare for here: coding patterns, system design, practice prompts, company guides.
What a careful reader should know
Maven Learning, Inc. was founded in 2020 by Gagan Biyani (Udemy co-founder), Wes Kao (altMBA co-founder) and Shreyans Bhansali (Socratic co-founder); it raised a $4.3M seed and a $20M a16z-led Series A in 2021 (about $25M total) and pivoted in September 2022 from creator-led to expert-led courses (TechCrunch). Prices, dates and refund terms are per course; on-page ratings are self-collected (evals course 4.7 from 1,012 ratings; RAG course 4.8 from 87). Maven publishes no outcomes data and offers no job support. The 'Mastering LLMs' course that made Husain and Becker's name on Maven is no longer run live; it is sold as a $20 archive of 11 talks and 4 workshops with no instructor access. The RAG course page lists 'Free Future Re-Enrollment' and $2,000+ in partner credits. Reddit discussion of specific AI cohorts was thin and the threads located could not be opened before Reddit blocked the session.
Sources (7)
- maven.com/parlance-labs/evals
- maven.com/applied-llms/rag-playbook
- maven.com/parlance-labs/fine-tuning
- maven.com/about
- help.maven.com/en/articles/8705540-maven-s-satisfaction-guarantee
- techcrunch.com/2021/05/20/maven-series-a-a16z/
- techcrunch.com/2022/09/13/mavens-a16z-backed-teaching-platform-pivots-from-creators-to-experts/
This directory takes no lead fees or placement payments from any program. Where a program runs an affiliate scheme we say so on its page and mark the link. Facts carry a badge: verified means we read it on a primary source on the date shown, reported means a third party said it, unknown means nobody we trust has published it.
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