UC Berkeley Ranks No. 1 for Startup Founders for Fourth Consecutive Year

The University of California, Berkeley has once again topped PitchBook’s annual ranking of universities producing startup founders, marking the fourth consecutive year the university has ranked No. 1 on the undergraduate list.

PitchBook, a data provider covering private and public equity markets, ranks universities based on the number of alumni entrepreneurs who have raised venture capital. The 2026 rankings draw on PitchBook data and analyze the educational backgrounds of more than 222,000 venture-backed founders globally.

Berkeley Leads Undergraduate Rankings

UC Berkeley ranked No. 1 for both the number of venture-backed startups founded by undergraduate alumni and the number of founders.

Berkeley undergraduate alumni have founded 2,155 venture-backed companies, while 2,380 undergraduate alumni have gone on to found companies.

The university also had the highest number of female graduates who went on to found companies, with 345 female founders, according to PitchBook.

“Berkeley has always been a place where people chart their own course,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons said. “When you bring together that ethos with world-class research and a devotion to the public good, great things happen.”

Lyons said Berkeley’s four consecutive years at the top of the ranking reflect the university’s entrepreneurial culture, while its graduates are building companies intended to advance society and improve lives.

Stanford University ranked second on the undergraduate list, while Harvard University, Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) rounded out the top five.

Global Universities Gain Ground

The latest rankings also point to the growing global reach of university entrepreneurship.

More than half of the universities on PitchBook’s graduate list are located outside the United States, while international institutions account for more than one-third of the undergraduate list.

Indian universities made a particularly strong showing, with eight institutions appearing on the undergraduate list, driven largely by graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology system.

Canadian universities also performed strongly. The University of Waterloo entered the undergraduate top 10 for the first time, making it the first Canadian university to reach that position.

Stanford Leads Graduate Rankings

The rankings vary considerably by degree category.

For the graduate list, Stanford University ranked No. 1, followed by Harvard University, MIT, UC Berkeley and Columbia University.

The MBA list was led by Harvard University, with Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, INSEAD and Columbia University completing the top five.

The differences across the three lists highlight how entrepreneurial outcomes vary by educational background and degree type, while the continued presence of leading research universities across all three categories underscores the role of higher education in developing startup founders and supporting venture-backed entrepreneurship.

2026 PitchBook University Rankings

Undergraduate

Graduate

MBA

Methodology

The 2026 PitchBook university rankings are based on the total number of founders whose companies received a round of venture funding between January 1, 2015, and August 1, 2026.

The analysis uses PitchBook data on global venture capital investment together with educational information for more than 222,000 founders.

Venture funding rounds included in the analysis are Seed, Early Stage VC, Later Stage VC, Angel, Restart Early Stage VC, Restart Later Stage VC and Restart Angel.

Because companies can have multiple founders, and individual founders can have attended more than one institution, the same company or founder may be counted toward multiple universities.

The graduate category includes founders with any advanced degree, including an MBA. The MBA category includes only founders who earned an MBA from the institution being ranked.