Skip to Content

Stanford Grads Raise the Most Startup Capital

A report compares the fundraising success of alumni startups at top universities
October 29, 2012

Universities of all ilk have started incubators and accelerator programs to nurture student startups in the last few years. But aside from fanfare demo days, it’s hard to track the success of these kinds of programs.

That may be one reason for today’s report by the firm CB Insights. It claims to be the first-ever effort to track and measure entrepreneurship activity from top universities. The firm limited itself to six schools—Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, NYU, University of Pennsylvania, and MIT—and looked at money raised over the last five years by companies founded or led by alumni (or dropouts, in the case of Facebook founder and erstwhile Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg).

Stanford, with its proximity to Silicon Valley, unsurprisingly dominated the list. Companies associated with the school raised  $4.1 billion across 203 financing rounds from 2007 to 2011, the report says. In total, companies associated with all six universities raised $12.6 billion through 559 transactions in that same period.

Reflecting overall priorities for investors for the last few years, most funding went to software, semiconductor and chip-focused startups. But MIT and U.C. Berkeley-associated companies also were able to mix it up more, attracting a greater number of investors to the healthcare and energy sectors. NYU, which operates in the heart of New York City’s resurgent startup scene, had one of the faster funding growth rates.

As much as football games, report like these are sure to stoke the competitive fires between entrepreneurship programs at these schools.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers.

Plug-in hybrids are often sold as a transition to EVs, but new data from Europe shows we’re still underestimating the emissions they produce.

How scientists traced a mysterious covid case back to six toilets

When wastewater surveillance turns into a hunt for a single infected individual, the ethics get tricky.

Google DeepMind’s new generative model makes Super Mario–like games from scratch

Genie learns how to control games by watching hours and hours of video. It could help train next-gen robots too.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.