The University of Waterloo (UW) has achieved a significant milestone by securing the seventh position in global university entrepreneurship rankings. This achievement marks the first time a Canadian institution has broken into the top 10, as revealed in a recent report by PitchBook, an esteemed venture capital research firm.

UW stands out as the highest-ranking university outside the United States and one of only two non-U.S. universities to make it to the prestigious top 10 list. Among publicly funded institutions, UW holds the second position, trailing only the University of California, Berkeley.

The latest report, released on September 1, evaluates institutions based on the number of undergraduate alumni who have successfully established venture capital-backed companies. The ranking is derived from an extensive analysis encompassing over 222,000 VC-backed founders globally.

UW has made significant progress, climbing 11 spots from the previous year’s ranking, where it stood at the 18th position among undergraduate institutions. Noteworthy companies founded by UW alumni include Instacart, Databricks, ContextLogic Holdings, Faire, and Netskope.

Top 10 Universities for Undergraduate Alumni Entrepreneurs

Here are the top 10 universities globally for undergraduate alumni entrepreneurs who have raised venture capital in the past decade:

Rank	University	Founder Count
1	University of California, Berkeley	2,380
2	Stanford University	1,997
3	Harvard University	1,697
4	Cornell University	1,541
5	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	1,525
6	University of Pennsylvania	1,466
7	University of Waterloo	1,303
8	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	1,085
9	Tel Aviv University	1,084
10	University of Texas at Austin	1,036

Canadian Universities in the Global Top 100

Ontario boasts five of Canada’s eight universities in the top 100 for undergraduate entrepreneurs, with the remaining spots distributed among institutions in Quebec and British Columbia.