Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

For the third year in a row, graduates of the University of California Berkeley have founded more venture-backed companies than undergraduate alumni from any other university in the world, according to the 2025 PitchBook university rankings.

The rankings, released last week, placed Berkeley #1 both in terms of the number of venture-backed start-ups founded by undergraduate alumni, with 1,650 companies founded, and the number of founders, with 1,804 undergraduate alumni going on to found companies. Pitchbook also reported that no other university has more female graduates who have founded companies than Berkeley. In claiming the top spots, Berkeley bested Stanford, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In fact, eight of the top 10 schools were based in the U.S., with the other two located in Israel. The only Tennessee-based institution to make the top 100 was Vanderbilt University, which ranked #63, a drop of four spots from the 2024 listing.

In addition to Vanderbilt, other area universities in the top 100 included:

1. Duke University (#20);
2. University of Virginia (#31);
3. Georgia Institute of Technology (#33);
4. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (#41);
5. University of Florida (#51);
6. Emory University (Tied for #78); and
7. Virginia Institute of Technology (#87).

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