Synthesis traces its origins to Ad Astra, a small private school Elon Musk and educator Joshua Dahn started in 2015 originally for SpaceX employees' children, built around making age-based grade levels obsolete and centering learning on problem-solving rather than fixed curricula.
One specific class within Ad Astra, built around multiplayer simulations and games designed to teach first-principles problem-solving rather than subject-matter content directly, became popular enough that Dahn and Chrisman Frank, an engineer from ClassDojo, spun it off as a standalone platform, officially launching Synthesis in November 2020 as a weekly online enrichment program.
There's no free tier; pricing starts around $20 a month. For a family specifically interested in an enrichment program built around the same problem-solving, first-principles philosophy that shaped Elon Musk's own children's education, Synthesis's documented Ad Astra origins are a distinctive credential unlike any other tool in this category.
