P&Q’s Must Reads: The 100 Highest-Funded MBA Startups Of 2025

Hello everyone — Welcome back to Poets&Quants’ Must Reads, a quick, digestible recap of the top business school news, sponsored by CentreCourt, P&Q’s virtual admission events.

I’m your host, Kristy Bleizeffer, and I’ll be highlighting the most important P&Q stories you might have missed. So, let’s get to it.

No. 1: The 100 Highest-Funded MBA Startups Of 2025

Poets&Quants presents the 100 highest-funded startups of 2025, a list we have published since 2014. To compile it, we use a single metric that’s easy to compare across industries and regions: how much outside funding startups have raised in the past five years.

This year’s list spans industries, countries, and business schools around the world. Altogether, they’ve raised $7.56 billion since their founding.

In this story, you can see which schools produced the most MBA founders, where the founders are most likely to launch their ventures, and which MBA founder has out-raised them all. You’ll find it in our trending tab.

No. 2: Global MBA Boom Cools: U.S., UK & Canada Lose Applicants As Asia Surges

Graduate management education demand is still climbing worldwide, but the contours of that growth are beginning to change. According to the Graduate Management Admission Council’s 2025 Application Trends Survey, applications to graduate business programs increased 7% this year, a gain that builds on last year’s record-breaking 12% surge. The latest gains confirm the sector’s resilience, even amid economic and geopolitical volatility, but also point to stark differences in where and how candidates are choosing to pursue their degrees.
Applications to the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom slipped as international students looked elsewhere.
Learn more about the trends now, from our homepage.

No. 3: Poets&Quants’ End-of-Year Award Winners

Poets&Quants had the distinct honor to present our Annual Business Education Awards this week during the AACSB conference in Toronto.

That includes our Dean of the Year Peter Rodriguez who has transformed Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business in just about every dimension since taking over in 2016.

And our Business School of the Year, ESCP in France, which is completely transforming itself into a brand new management university that will house schools of business, technology, and governance. The dean envisions a “French MIT in reverse” that will spread across its unique multi-campus model.

And our MBA Professor of the Year, Andrew Hoffman, who wants to “blow up” the MBA curriculum to make it fit for a changing world.

You can find features on each of these award winners on our home page, and look this week for more honorees.

No. 4: Our Weekly Round Up of News You Can Use

No matter where you are in your MBA journey, we bring several helpful stories for you this week.

First up: Wharton Virtual Team Based Discussion: What To Expect & How To Prepare. This article offers Top tips for delivering your standout pitch, along with what success looks like, and how to optimize your performance on video. Find it on our homepage.

Next: The $100,000 H-1B Fee: What It Really Means For International Students. This important article, from our friends at Admissions Gateway, is up now in our trending tab.

Finally: Are You Crowdsourcing Your MBA Applications? This advice column, from North Star Admissions, walks you through the dos and don’ts when relying on friends and family for MBA essay help. Find it in our admissions hub.

And, that’s it for this week’s Must Reads recap.

I also want to alert school seekers to our events tab from our main menu. There, you’ll find all the upcoming admissions events for a range of degrees and programs including full-time and online MBAs, specialized masters, entrepreneurship and more. Registration is free.

Again, I’m Kristy Bleizeffer, and you can join me next week, right here, for a recap of what’s important in the world of business education. Thanks for listening.

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