From AI to quantum computing, University of Toronto graduates are shaking up existing industries \u2013 and forging brand new ones \u2013 by launching and scaling high-impact startup companies in Canada and around the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their collective impact is captured in a\u00a0recent ranking by Pitchbook<\/a>, which named U of T Canada\u2019s top university for producing venture-backed entrepreneurs and 17th in the world for producing undergraduate alumni founders.<\/p>\n The Seattle-based financial data and research company\u2019s annual ranking draws on a global database of venture capital and startup activity to rank the world\u2019s top 100 universities based on the number of alumni who raised venture capital in the last decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe incredible accomplishments of our alumni founders demonstrate how the resources, networks and expertise available at the University of Toronto are building a culture of entrepreneurship that turns ideas into impact,\u201d said\u00a0Leah Cowen, U of T\u2019s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.<\/p>\n \u201cThese ventures create jobs, draw investment and deliver solutions in Canada and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2025 edition of the Pitchbook ranking analyzed more than 173,000 entrepreneurs to rank universities\u2019 alumni at the undergraduate, graduate and MBA levels, along with\u00a0separate lists for female founders<\/a>.<\/p>\n U of T rose eight spots from last year to place 17th globally on the undergraduate alumni list \u2013 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.<\/p>\n Female founders were a particular bright spot. U of T ranked 15th worldwide for undergraduate female founders and 25th for graduate female founders \u2013 again leading the country in both measures.<\/p>\n 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).<\/p>\n U of T undergraduate alum Nick Frosst, right, co-founded AI startup Cohere after working with U of T University Professor Geoffrey Hinton, right. The pair are pictured here at a talk hosted by journalist Nora Young, centre \u00a0(photo by Kevin Fung)<\/p>\n Globally, the top five undergraduate spots went to the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n Because companies can have multiple founders \u2013 and founders can have attended more than one school \u2013 the same entrepreneur may be counted toward the totals of multiple institutions.<\/p>\n PitchBook\u2019s tally of alumni founders only captures one facet of U of T\u2019s 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 intellectual property.<\/p>\n U of T\u2019s strong performance in the Pitchbook ranking was echoed in a separate ranking by\u00a0Fast Company, which placed U of T 21st\u00a0in its global\u00a0Ignition Schools 2025<\/a>\u00a0list \u2013 the second time in two years<\/a> that\u00a0U of T has been ranked number one in Canada\u00a0by 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.<\/p>\n Altogether,\u00a0entrepreneurs from the U of T community<\/a>\u00a0have 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.<\/p>\n Among the ventures contributing to this momentum are Waabi, an autonomous driving company founded by\u00a0Raquel Urtasun, a professor of computer science, and Xanadu, a quantum computing firm launched by former U of T postdoctoral researcher\u00a0Christian Weedbrook.<\/p>\n The success of these and other companies reflects U of T\u2019s growing strength in fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other emerging technologies, said\u00a0Jon French, director of U of T Entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n Raquel Urtasun, a U of T professor of computer science, founded the autonomous trucking company Waabi\u00a0(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)<\/p>\n Alumni who worked with luminaries like\u00a0Geoffrey Hinton,\u00a0University Professor<\/a>\u00a0emeritus of computer science and\u00a0recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics<\/a>, have gone on to launch a new generation of AI companies, French added, helping establish Toronto as a hub for cutting-edge research and commercialization. That includes Cohere, an AI startup co-founded by U of T alumni\u00a0Aidan Gomez,\u00a0Nick Frosst\u00a0and\u00a0Ivan Zhang, that raised $500 million in August<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the same time, many entrepreneurial alumni are paying it forward \u2013 from\u00a0gifts that strengthen campus accelerators<\/a>\u00a0to supporting the next wave of\u00a0innovators<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0entrepreneurs<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 ensuring that today\u2019s students and researchers have the supports and resources to take their ideas from classrooms and labs to commercialization.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a \u2018no wrong door\u2019 philosophy,\u201d French said. \u201cIt doesn’t matter what you study or where you study, or what your background is. There are access points across the University of Toronto because of the breadth and depth in research domain expertise and the inclusive nature of our community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From AI to quantum computing, University of Toronto graduates are shaking up existing industries \u2013 and forging brand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[64,63,99,198],"class_list":{"0":"post-215585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-entrepreneurship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}