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

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PITCHBOOK’S BEST EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES FOR MBA 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: European Universities For MBA Founders
2026 Rank
University
Founder Count
Company Count
Capital Raised
Change vs. 2025
1 INSEAD 1,112 1,032 $39.6B –
2 London Business School 568 528 $16.0B –
3 IE University 388 343 $7.2B –
4 IESE Business School 381 345 $8.5B ⬆ +9
5 HEC Paris 292 277 $7.1B ⬇ –1
6 University of Oxford 263 236 $9.7B ⬇ –1
7 ESADE 233 212 $3.7B ⬇ –1
8 University of Cambridge 127 115 $2.9B –
9 ESSEC Business School 113 109 $3.5B ⬇ –2
10 Imperial College London 92 89 $920M ⬇ –1
11 IMD Business School 85 80 $4.4B –
12 University of Warwick 77 77 $775M –
13 Cranfield University 75 72 $1.9B ⬇ –3
14 Bocconi University 59 56 $479M –
15 Stockholm School of Economics 57 55 $443M –
16 Erasmus University Rotterdam 56 56 $388M –
17 London School of Economics 52 50 $1.5B ⬆ +2
18 University College Dublin 44 42 $688M ⬆ +2
19 University of St. Gallen 43 42 $995M ⬇ –2
20 Open University 39 39 $1.0B ⬆ +2
21 Heriot-Watt University 38 37 $368M ⬆ +2
22 City, University of London 35 33 $633M ⬇ –1
T23 University of Bradford 34 34 $277M ⬆ +1
T23 EDHEC Business School 34 33 $164M ⬆ +3
T23 Copenhagen Business School 34 32 $302M –