PitchBook’s 2026 Top Universities, Ranked By Number Of MBA Startup Founders

PITCHBOOK’S BEST UNIVERSITIES FOR FEMALE FOUNDERS

PitchBook analyzed educational information for more than 222,000 VC-backed founders, compared to more than 173,000 in its 2025 ranking.

This year’s ranking counts founders whose companies received a round of venture funding between January 1, 2015 and August 1, 2026. Qualifying funding includes seed, early- and later-stage venture capital, angel investment and several restart funding categories. Because companies can have multiple founders — and founders can attend more than one university — the same company or entrepreneur can be credited to multiple schools. Pitchbook breaks it results into separate lists for MBA, graduate, and undergraduate categories, as well as female founders and European University MBA founders.

Data used comes from the PitchBook Platform or is collected from publicly available and primary sources.

PitchBook 2026: Female MBA Founders
2026 Rank	University	Founder Count	Company Count	Capital Raised	Change vs. 2025
1	Harvard University	467	441	$12.9B	–
2	Stanford University	296	281	$17.1B	–
3	University of Pennsylvania	197	189	$5.6B	–
4	Columbia University	167	164	$3.8B	–
5	Northwestern University	165	161	$6.3B	⬇ –1
T6	MIT	154	152	$4.5B	⬆ +1
T6	INSEAD	154	147	$2.4B	–
8	University of Chicago	118	117	$2.7B	–
9	London Business School	93	89	$1.1B	–
10	UC Berkeley	87	85	$2.4B	–
11	New York University	86	85	$1.1B	–
12	UCLA	62	60	$1.5B	–
13	IESE Business School	46	46	$1.2B	⬆ +59
14	University of Oxford	45	42	$417M	⬇ –1
15	Cornell University	44	43	$694M	⬇ –1
16	IE University	40	40	$523M	⬆ +7
17	Yale University	39	39	$594M	⬇ –1
18	Tel Aviv University	37	37	$818M	⬇ –2
19	Arizona State University, Tempe	36	36	$431M	–
20	HEC Paris	35	35	$772M	⬇ –4
21	Duke University	34	33	$277M	⬇ –6
22	USC	33	33	$693M	⬇ –2
T23	ESADE	32	32	$168M	⬇ –3
T23	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	32	32	$770M	⬇ –1
25	Babson College	28	28	$466M	–

© Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.

PITCHBOOK’S BEST UNIVERSITIES FOR FEMALE FOUNDERS

PitchBook 2026: Female MBA Founders

2026 Rank

University

Founder Count

Company Count

Capital Raised

Change vs. 2025