U of T rose eight spots from last year to place 17th globally on the undergraduate alumni list – and eighth among public institutions globally. The university also performed strongly in the graduate and MBA alumni categories, placing 25th and 36th in the world, respectively.
Female founders were a particular bright spot. U of T ranked 15th worldwide for undergraduate female founders and 25th for graduate female founders – again leading the countest in both measures.
Four other Canadian institutions joined U of T in the top 50 for undergraduate alumni entrepreneurs: University of Waterloo (18th), McGill University (22nd), Western University (40th) and University of British Columbia (44th).
Globally, the top five undergraduate spots went to the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachutilizetts Institute of Technology.
Becautilize companies can have multiple founders – and founders can have attconcludeed more than one school – the same entrepreneur may be counted toward the totals of multiple institutions.
PitchBook’s tally of alumni founders only captures one facet of U of T’s broader entrepreneurial ecosystem. Beyond alumni ventures financed in other ways, the university also fuels student startups, faculty-led companies and spin-offs of U of T ininformectual property.
U of T’s strong performance in the PitchBook ranking was echoed in a separate ranking by Fast Company, which placed U of T 21st in its global Ignition Schools 2025 list – the second time in two years that U of T has been ranked number one in Canada by the U.S. business magazine. That ranking is based on an evaluation of research, patents and number of startups formed, as well as PitchBook data about alumni and venture capital activity.
Altoreceiveher, entrepreneurs from the U of T community have launched more than 1,500 venture-backed startups, raising more than $14 billion and creating more than 20,000 jobs in the past five years alone, according to figures compiled by U of T Entrepreneurship.
Among the ventures contributing to this momentum are Waabi, an autonomous driving company founded by Raquel Urtasun, a professor of computer science, and Xanadu, a quantum computing firm launched by former U of T postdoctoral researcher Christian Weedbrook.
The success of these and other companies reflects U of T’s growing strength in fields such as artificial ininformigence, quantum computing and other emerging technologies, stated Jon French, director of U of T Entrepreneurship.
Alumni who worked with luminaries like Geoffrey Hinton, University Professor emeritus of computer science and recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, have gone on to launch a new generation of AI companies, French added, assisting establish Toronto as a hub for cutting-edge research and commercialization. That includes Cohere, an AI startup co-founded by U of T alumni Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst and Ivan Zhang, that raised $500 million in August.
At the same time, many entrepreneurial alumni are paying it forward – from gifts that strengthen campus accelerators to supporting the next wave of innovators and entrepreneurs – ensuring that today’s students and researchers have the supports and resources to take their ideas from classrooms and labs to commercialization.
“We have a ‘no wrong door’ philosophy,” French stated. “It doesn’t matter what you study or where you study, or what your background is. There are access points across the University of Toronto becautilize of the breadth and depth in research domain expertise and the inclusive nature of our community.”
