Fourteen years ago, a venture capital firm created a program for college students to invest in their peers, called Dorm Room Fund. Some dismissed the effort as risky and a little bit crazy. Now the fund’s network has its tentacles all over the artificial intelligence boom. Dorm Room Fund’s alumni have gone on to establish major A.I. companies like the coding start-up Cursor and the defense tech company Shield AI. Others have become investors at top firms including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

This month, Dorm Room Fund raised a new $50 million fund to keep investing in companies created by college students and the 500 members of its alumni network. That is four times the size of its last fund. Silicon Valley investors have long courted college students, but the wooing has gotten more aggressive in the A.I. boom. Last week, Andreessen Horowitz announced the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a free unaccredited one-year program in San Francisco for high school graduates. The start-up accelerator Y Combinator last year introduced Early Decision, where founders can defer joining until after they graduate.

“When there are big tech shifts, it advantages first-time builders,” said Molly Fowler, 39, a partner at Dorm Room Fund, which is based in New York. The program works by choosing students from a pool of applicants, creating a team of 60 student investors on roughly 30 campuses — including Stanford University and the University of Waterloo — each academic year. At least 118 Dorm Room Fund student investors have become entrepreneurs.

Ms. Fowler said she had initially targeted $30 million for the latest fund but had enough interest for $50 million. The portfolio includes eight $1 billion start-ups — such as Shield AI. “It’s not like, ‘Here’s $100,000, go give it to your friends,’” she said.