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

If the question is which MBA programs produce the most founders over the last decade, the answer is the same as last year. And the year before that.

Harvard Business School again topped PitchBook’s annual ranking of MBA programs for producing venture-backed entrepreneurs, this time with 2,444 alumni founders creating 2,235 companies. That’s 538 more founders than PitchBook counted for Harvard just a year ago. Those companies have raised a combined $153.5 billion.

Stanford Graduate School of Business held at No. 2 with 1,504 MBA founders and 1,359 companies and $96.8 billion raised.

University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, France’s INSEAD, and Columbia Business School rounded out the top 5.

PitchBook’s Top 10 2026: MBA Founders
2026 Rank	University	Founder Count	Company Count	Capital Raised	Change vs. 2025
1	Harvard University	2,444	2,235	$153.5B	–
2	Stanford University	1,504	1,359	$96.8B	–
3	University of Pennsylvania	1,437	1,332	$80.3B	–
4	INSEAD	1,112	1,032	$39.6B	–
5	Columbia University	1,019	954	$38.7B	–
6	Northwestern University	1,015	966	$33.9B	–
7	MIT	934	858	$42.6B	↑ +1
8	University of Chicago	884	823	$29.8B	↓ –1
9	UC Berkeley	705	650	$27.5B	–
10	London Business School	568	528	$19.0B	–

PitchBook — a database for mergers and acquisitions, private equity, and venture capital — ranks 50 MBA programs from around the world for its annual list.

The same 10 universities that made PitchBook’s MBA top 10 last year were back again in 2026. The only movement is MIT and University of Chicago swapping places. MIT rose one spot to No. 7 while Chicago slipped to No. 8.

TOP UNIVERSITIES FOR MBA FOUNDERS

PitchBook compiles its annual university rankings by tallying alumni entrepreneurs whose companies have attracted venture capital over the last decade.

Its 2026 analysis is considerably larger than the one released a year ago. 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.

Harvard’s highest earning company is Grab Holdings at $10.1 billion, charging ahead of last year’s top company Northvolt at $6.9 billion. Gojek (raising $5.5 billion) and Generate ($4.3 billion) are the next highest.

The highest earning companies for Stanford GSB include Social Finance ($3.6 billion), Cerebras Systems ($2.9 billion), and Kavak ($2.9 billion.)

Harvard also tops this list by number of female founders (467 compared to Stanford’s 296), but companies founded by Stanford female entrepreneurs earned more over the last decade ($17.1 billion compared to $12.9 billion.)

Click to page 2 for the ranking by number of MBA female founders.

GOOD B-SCHOOLS MAKE LOTS OF ENTREPRENEURS

If the ranking looks familiar to anyone who follows elite MBA programs, it should.

All of the M7s appear in the top 10 of Pitchbook’s list. Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which this year topped Poets&Quants’ composite ranking of the best MBA programs in the U.S. for the second time, had the sixth most MBA founders for global universities, according to Pitchbook. That’s 1,015 MBA founders, 966 companies, and earning $33.9 billion in the last decade.

U.S. schools likewise continue to dominate the MBA ranking. Eight of the top 10 and 14 of the top 20 are American universities. INSEAD and London Business School are the only international programs in the top 10, while IE, IESE and HEC Paris give continental Europe three more programs in the top 20. Tel Aviv University, at No. 13, is the highest-ranked MBA program outside the U.S. and Europe.

Click to page 3 for Pitchbook’s best European MBAs for entrepreneurs ranking.

PITCHBOOK’S BEST UNIVERSITIES FOR MBA FOUNDERS

Most of the movement in PitchBook’s 2026 MBA ranking happens outside the very top, where the hierarchy remains remarkably stable.

The biggest mover by far is IESE Business School, which rose 37 places to No. 15. Western University in Canada, home to Ivey Business School, climbed eight spots to a tie at No. 42. Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business jumped five places while Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business rose four.

On the other end, Georgetown McDonough and ESSEC Business School took the steepest falls among the top 50, each dropping six positions. Oxford and Indian School of Business slid four spots apiece.

The much bigger change is in the raw numbers. Founder counts rose sharply across much of this year’s ranking, but that doesn’t mean hundreds of new MBA entrepreneurs suddenly emerged over the last 12 months.

PitchBook rolls its 10-year measurement window forward each year, and its underlying dataset also expanded significantly. The 2025 ranking analyzed more than 173,000 VC-backed founders while this year’s edition draws from the educational histories of more than 222,000. So year-over-year founder counts aren’t an apples-to-apples measure of new startup creation.

The table below shows the top 50 programs for MBA founders.

PitchBook 2026: MBA Founders
2026 Rank	University	Founder Count	Company Count	Capital Raised	Change vs. 2025
1	Harvard University	2,444	2,235	$153.5B	–
2	Stanford University	1,504	1,359	$96.8B	–
3	University of Pennsylvania	1,437	1,332	$80.3B	–
4	INSEAD	1,112	1,032	$39.6B	–
5	Columbia University	1,019	954	$38.7B	–
6	Northwestern University	1,015	966	$33.9B	–
7	MIT	934	858	$42.6B	⬆ +1
8	University of Chicago	884	823	$29.8B	⬇ –1
9	UC Berkeley	705	650	$27.5B	–
10	London Business School	568	528	$16.0B	–
11	New York University	546	534	$19.0B	⬆ +1
12	UCLA	530	505	$19.4B	⬇ –1
13	Tel Aviv University	429	410	$13.2B	–
14	IE University	388	343	$7.2B	⬆ +1
15	IESE Business School	381	345	$8.5B	⬆ +37
16	Duke University	334	326	$7.6B	⬇ –2
17	HEC Paris	292	277	$7.1B	⬇ –1
18	Babson College	288	265	$6.2B	–
19	Cornell University	282	271	$9.4B	⬆ +3
20	University of Texas, Austin	273	246	$4.2B	⬆ +1
21	University of Oxford	263	236	$9.7B	⬇ –4
22	USC	259	252	$23.8B	⬇ –3
23	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	254	246	$7.1B	⬆ +1
24	Indian School of Business (ISB)	240	217	$7.8B	⬇ –4
25	ESADE	233	212	$3.7B	–
26	Yale University	225	212	$5.9B	⬇ –3
27	Arizona State University, Tempe	196	190	$6.8B	–
28	University of Virginia, Charlottesville	195	187	$7.0B	–
29	IIM Calcutta	190	177	$11.1B	⬇ –3
30	Dartmouth College	189	184	$7.0B	⬆ +4
31	CEIBS	175	170	$11.4B	⬆ +1
32	Tsinghua University	171	167	$26.3B	⬇ –3
33	Carnegie Mellon University	165	153	$8.1B	⬇ –3
34	IIM Bangalore	163	153	$4.6B	⬇ –3
35	Pepperdine University	154	147	$3.9B	⬇ –3
36	UNC Chapel Hill	146	144	$5.1B	⬆ +2
37	Getulio Vargas Foundation	144	140	$1.5B	⬇ –2
38	University of Washington, Seattle	134	126	$4.2B	⬇ –1
39	University of Toronto	132	127	$4.0B	⬇ –3
40	University of Cambridge	127	115	$2.9B	⬆ +2
41	York University	122	118	$1.3B	–
T42	Western University	121	117	$3.0B	⬆ +8
T42	Santa Clara University	121	119	$6.1B	⬆ +5
44	Boston University	120	119	$3.1B	⬇ –4
45	Georgetown University	117	109	$4.7B	⬇ –6
46	Indiana University, Bloomington	115	113	$2.6B	⬆ +3
47	Peking University	114	114	$7.7B	⬇ –3
48	ESSEC Business School	113	109	$3.5B	⬇ –6
49	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	107	104	$6.4B	⬇ –4
50	Vanderbilt University	104	99	$4.6B	⬆ +1

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