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

UC Berkeley keeps the No. 1 spot in PitchBook’s 2026 ranking of undergraduate startup founders, as Waterloo surges 11 places into the top 10.

by: Kristy Bleizeffer on September 08, 2026 | 10 minute read

PITCHBOOK’S BEST UNIVERSITIES FOR UNDERGRADUATE FEMALE FOUNDERS

PitchBook compiles its annual university ranking by tallying alumni entrepreneurs whose companies have attracted venture funding over the previous decade.

The 2026 edition is based on a considerably larger pool of founders than last year. PitchBook analyzed the educational histories of more than 222,000 VC-backed founders, up from more than 173,000 for its 2025 list.

PitchBook 2026: Female Undergraduate Founders
2026 Rank
University
Founder Count
Company Count
Capital Raised
Change vs. 2025
1 University of California, Berkeley 345 342 $10.2B –
2 Stanford University 307 296 $10.8B –
3 Harvard University 274 265 $11.6B –
4 Cornell University 254 244 $8.3B ⬆ +1
5 University of Pennsylvania 229 222 $4.9B ⬇ –1
6 New York University 180 177 $3.2B ⬆ +1
7 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 178 176 $6.0B ⬇ –1
8 Columbia University 153 150 $3.4B –
9 Yale University 145 144 $8.1B ⬆ +4
10 Princeton University 142 136 $7.0B ⬇ –1
T11 University of Waterloo 135 129 $2.2B ⬆ +23
T11 University of Texas, Austin 135 131 $3.0B ⬇ –2
13 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) 130 129 $3.7B ⬇ –4
14 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 129 124 $2.5B ⬇ –2
15 Brown University 127 127 $2.8B –
16 Northwestern University 120 117 $2.8B ⬇ –2
17 University of Toronto 110 106 $1.0B ⬇ –1
18 Duke University 109 108 $2.1B ⬇ –1
19 University of Southern California (USC) 107 107 $3.4B ⬆ +1
20 McGill University 103 102 $2.6B ⬇ –2
21 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 98 95 $4.2B ⬇ –2
22 Boston University 94 92 $1.7B –
23 Western University 92 83 $1.3B ⬆ +7
24 Tel Aviv University 90 87 $2.2B ⬇ –2
25 University of Wisconsin, Madison 88 87 $1.2B ⬆ +6
26 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 86 85 $1.2B ⬇ –5
27 Georgetown University 83 82 $1.7B ⬇ –1
28 Dartmouth College 82 81 $4.3B ⬇ –4
29 University of Virginia, Charlottesville 81 79 $1.0B ⬇ –3
30 University of Colorado, Boulder 80 78 $1.2B ⬇ –5
T31 National University of Singapore 79 76 $1.3B ⬇ –2
T31 Vanderbilt University 79 79 $1.7B ⬆ +9
33 University of Washington, Seattle 76 75 $183.6B ⬇ –2
34 Peking University 69 68 $26.6B ⬇ –8
35 Delhi University, India 67 67 $5.9B ⬆ +4
T36 University of California, San Diego 66 66 $1.7B ⬇ –3
T36 University of British Columbia 66 65 $584M ⬆ +4
T38 University of Oxford 64 63 $905M ⬇ –3
T38 University of Chicago 64 60 $709M ⬇ –2
T40 Technion – Israel Institute of Technology 61 61 $957M ⬆ +4
T40 Carnegie Mellon University 61 60 $1.4B ⬇ –4
T42 Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) 58 58 $1.7B ⬇ –2
T42 Indiana University, Bloomington 58 57 $663M ⬆ +151
T44 Monash University 56 55 $897M ⬆ +6
T44 University of Sydney 56 55 $656M ⬆ +4
46 Wellesley College 55 54 $1.2B ⬇ –3
47 Tsinghua University 54 52 $3.7B ⬇ –3
T48 Tufts University 53 52 $2.0B ⬇ –10
T48 Washington University 53 53 $654M ⬆ +4
T48 University of Florida, Gainesville 53 53 $891M ⬇ –2

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