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More than a third of the most successful AI venture capitalists in the U.S. have an MBA. Most of them earned it at one of two schools.<\/p>\n
Of the investors in the 2026 Strebulaev-Jackson ranking of top 100 AI VCs, 38 hold an MBA, according to an analysis Stanford GSB professor Ilya Strebulaev shared with Poets&Quants. Fifteen of those degrees are from Stanford\u2019s Graduate School of Business, and 12 are from Harvard Business School. Together the two schools account for 27 of the 38 MBAs, or 71.1%.<\/p>\n
\u201cBusiness school is a prominent route into AI venture investing,\u201d says Strebulaev.<\/p>\n
The MBA edge is sharpest at the very top. Five of the 10 highest-ranked investors hold MBAs, and four of them are from Stanford. Matthew Murphy of Menlo Ventures, No. 1 in the ranking, is a Stanford MBA. So are David George (No. 5) and Sarah Wang (No. 6) of Andreessen Horowitz, and Marc Stad of Dragoneer (No. 7). Joshua Kushner of Thrive Capital, No. 4, holds an MBA from Harvard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MBAs AMONG THE TOP 200 AI VCS, BY SCHOOL<\/p>\n
School
\nTop 100
\nRanks 101\u2013200
\nTop 200<\/p>\n
Stanford GSB
\n15
\n6
\n21<\/p>\n
Harvard Business School
\n12
\n10
\n22<\/p>\n
Wharton
\n3
\n5
\n8<\/p>\n
Chicago Booth
\n2
\n2
\n4<\/p>\n
Northwestern Kellogg
\n2
\n0
\n2<\/p>\n
Columbia Business School
\n1
\n0
\n1<\/p>\n
IIM Bangalore
\n1
\n0
\n1<\/p>\n
University of San Francisco
\n1
\n0
\n1<\/p>\n
Yale SOM
\n1
\n0
\n1<\/p>\n
MIT Sloan
\n0
\n3
\n3<\/p>\n
Dartmouth Tuck
\n0
\n2
\n2<\/p>\n
INSEAD
\n0
\n2
\n2<\/p>\n
Cornell Johnson
\n0
\n1
\n1<\/p>\n
Duke Fuqua
\n0
\n1
\n1<\/p>\n
National University (San Diego)
\n0
\n1
\n1<\/p>\n
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
\n0
\n1
\n1<\/p>\n
UCLA Anderson
\n0
\n1
\n1<\/p>\n
USC Marshall
\n0
\n1
\n1<\/p>\n
Total MBAs
\n38
\n36
\n74<\/p>\n
Share with an MBA
\n38%
\n36%
\n37%<\/p>\n
Source: Ilya Strebulaev, Stanford GSB<\/p>\n
HOW THE RANKING WORKS<\/p>\n
The 2026 Strebulaev-Jackson ranking of top 100 AI VCs ranks individual investors rather than firms. It\u2019s a companion to the researchers\u2019 ranking of AI venture capital firms. Investors are scored only on their investments in U.S.-based, venture-backed AI companies, so every point comes from an AI company. The cutoff date is Aug. 31, 2026.<\/p>\n
To decide which companies count as AI, Strebulaev and his co-author classified 728 U.S.-based, venture-backed companies. Their main tool is what they call a removal test: strip the AI out of a company and ask whether the product still exists as something customers would buy.<\/p>\n
Each investor\u2019s score rests on six factors, the same ones the researchers use across all their venture rankings. They are the valuation of the companies an investor backed, dilution, net profit, value add, human-capital decay (which discounts older investments) and the split of credit between a firm and its individual partners. The full methodology is laid out in a working paper by Strebulaev and Jackson.<\/p>\n
The MBA analysis is a separate layer on top of the ranking. Strebulaev\u2019s team traced the education of each of the top 200 investors through public and commercial profiles, firm bios, LinkedIn and interviews. What they found was a business school pipeline that runs overwhelmingly through Palo Alto and Boston.<\/p>\n
A STANFORD & HARVARD STRONGHOLD<\/p>\n
Stanford\u2019s 15 MBA holders reach well beyond the top 10. The roster includes Ravi Mhatre of Lightspeed Venture Partners (No. 11), Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures (No. 17), Glenn Solomon of Notable Capital (No. 29) and Antonio Rodriguez of Matrix (No. 40). It also includes Sameer Gandhi of Accel (No. 57), Jeffrey Jordan of Andreessen Horowitz (No. 58), Somesh Dash of IVP (No. 69) and Apoorv Agrawal of Altimeter (No. 78). Rounding it out are Michelangelo Volpi of Index Ventures (No. 83), Katherine Boyle of Andreessen Horowitz (No. 85) and Yan-David Erlich of B Capital (No. 96).<\/p>\n
Harvard\u2019s 12 MBA holders include Raviraj Jain of Lightspeed (No. 20), Alex Immerman of Andreessen Horowitz (No. 27), Mamoon Hamid (No. 30) and John Doerr (No. 38) of Kleiner Perkins, and Brandon Reeves of Lux Capital (No. 47). They also include Bradley Gerstner of Altimeter (No. 56), Sameer Dholakia of Bessemer Venture Partners (No. 68), Anne Dwane of Village Global (No. 81) and Yasmin Razavi of Spark Capital (No. 91). Sujay Jaswa of WndrCo (No. 95) and Max Gazor of Striker Venture Partners (No. 98) complete the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are several factors at play,\u201d Strebulaev tells P&Q. \u201cMy other research shows the importance of social networking in education: Stanford VCs are more likely to invest in Stanford founders who also tend to have a higher likelihood of success, for example. Proximity to Sand Hill Road certainly plays a role as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Size makes Stanford\u2019s showing even more striking. \u201cGSB is smaller than HBS quite a bit,\u201d he says, \u201cso in relative terms GSB is even more prominent than HBS.\u201d<\/p>\n
WHARTON A DISTANT THIRD<\/p>\n
Only nine business schools appear in the top 100, and none beyond Stanford, Harvard and Wharton has more than two graduates. Wharton places three: Sarah Guo of Conviction Partners (No. 33), Dharmesh Thakker of Battery Ventures (No. 48) and Ish Dugal of IronArc Ventures (No. 51).<\/p>\n
Chicago Booth has two: Cack Wilhelm of IVP (No. 62) and Robert Nelsen of ARCH Venture Partners (No. 70). So does Northwestern\u2019s Kellogg School: Peter Sonsini of Laude Ventures (No. 21) and Alexander Lazovsky of Scale-Up (No. 74), who earned his degree through the Kellogg-Recanati executive MBA. Columbia Business School (John Wolff of Insight Partners, No. 23) and Yale School of Management (Mary D\u2019Onofrio of Crosslink, No. 100) each have one. So do the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (Ashu Garg of Foundation Capital, No. 88) and the University of San Francisco (Lip-Bu Tan of Celesta, No. 67).<\/p>\n
Some prominent schools are missing entirely. MIT Sloan, despite MIT\u2019s weight in AI research, has no MBAs in the top 100. Neither do UC-Berkeley\u2019s Haas School, NYU\u2019s Stern School or UCLA Anderson.<\/p>\n
Holding an MBA doesn\u2019t appear to lift an investor higher within the ranking. MBA holders rank about the same on average as investors without one, Strebulaev says, although they make up a minority of the list.<\/p>\n
TWO NEAR-MISSES IN THE TOP 10<\/p>\n
Strebulaev\u2019s team counted full-time, part-time, executive and one-year mid-career MBAs, as well as the Indian Institutes of Management\u2019s PGP, which it treats as the Indian equivalent. Non-degree executive education didn\u2019t count. Neither did business master\u2019s degrees that aren\u2019t MBAs, or admission without enrolling.<\/p>\n
Those rules left out two of the top 10, both with Harvard ties. Guru Chahal of Lightspeed, No. 2 in the ranking, completed HBS\u2019s General Management Program, which awards a non-degree certificate. Sol Bier of Factorial Funds, No. 10, enrolled in the HBS MBA program but didn\u2019t finish. Counting both would give seven of the top 10 a Stanford or Harvard business school connection.<\/p>\n
THE NEXT 100 LOOKS DIFFERENT<\/p>\n
Extending the analysis to 200 investors barely changes the overall MBA share. Thirty-six of the investors ranked 101 to 200 have an MBA, compared with 38 in the top 100. But the two-school grip loosens. Stanford and Harvard account for 16 of the 36 MBAs in that group, and Harvard leads with 10 to Stanford\u2019s six. Wharton follows with five, and MIT Sloan has three.<\/p>\n
Nine schools appear for the first time in ranks 101 to 200: MIT Sloan, Dartmouth\u2019s Tuck School of Business, INSEAD, Cornell, Duke\u2019s Fuqua School of Business, UCLA Anderson, USC\u2019s Marshall School of Business, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and National University.<\/p>\n
Across all 200 investors, 74, or 37%, hold an MBA. Harvard edges Stanford 22 to 21, and Wharton is third with eight. Eighteen schools are represented.<\/p>\n
Read more about the 2026 Strebulaev-Jackson ranking of top 100 AI VCs here.<\/a><\/p>\n MBA HOLDERS IN THE 2026 STREBULAEV-JACKSON RANKING OF TOP 100 AI VCS<\/p>\n Rank 1 4 5 6 7 11 17 20 21 23 27 29 30 33 38 40 47 48 51 56 57 58 62 67 68 69 70 74 78 81 83 85 88 91 95 96 98 100 Not counted: Guru Chahal (No. 2, Lightspeed) completed HBS\u2019s non-degree General Management Program, and Sol Bier (No. 10, Factorial Funds) left the HBS MBA program without finishing. DON\u2019T MISS YOUR MBA PROBABLY WON\u2019T HELP YOU BUILD A UNICORN. HERE\u2019S THE DATA<\/a> and THE MBA IS AN AMERICAN DEGREE: EXCLUSIVE DATA ON B-SCHOOL\u2019S AND THE WORLD\u2019S UNICORN FOUNDERS<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a9 Copyright 2026 Poets&Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets&Quants, please submit your request HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than a third of the most successful AI venture capitalists in the U.S. have an MBA. Most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[84,4203,61245,268569,23672,56,54,55,22333,4213],"class_list":["post-818493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-harvard","tag-ilya-strebulaev","tag-stanford","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-vc","tag-venture-capital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nInvestor
\nFirm
\nMBA School<\/p>\n
\nMatthew Murphy
\nMenlo Ventures
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nJoshua Kushner
\nThrive Capital
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nDavid George
\nAndreessen Horowitz
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nSarah Wang
\nAndreessen Horowitz
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nMarc Stad
\nDragoneer
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nRavi Mhatre
\nLightspeed Venture Partners
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nVinod Khosla
\nKhosla Ventures
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nRaviraj Jain
\nLightspeed Venture Partners
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nPeter Sonsini
\nLaude Ventures
\nNorthwestern Kellogg<\/p>\n
\nJohn Wolff
\nInsight Partners
\nColumbia Business School<\/p>\n
\nAlex Immerman
\nAndreessen Horowitz
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nGlenn Solomon
\nNotable Capital
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nMamoon Hamid
\nKleiner Perkins
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nSarah Guo
\nConviction Partners
\nWharton<\/p>\n
\nJohn Doerr
\nKleiner Perkins
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nAntonio Rodriguez
\nMatrix
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nBrandon Reeves
\nLux Capital
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nDharmesh Thakker
\nBattery Ventures
\nWharton<\/p>\n
\nIsh Dugal
\nIronArc Ventures
\nWharton<\/p>\n
\nBradley Gerstner
\nAltimeter
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nSameer Gandhi
\nAccel
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nJeffrey Jordan
\nAndreessen Horowitz
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nCack Wilhelm
\nIVP
\nChicago Booth<\/p>\n
\nLip-Bu Tan
\nCelesta
\nUniversity of San Francisco<\/p>\n
\nSameer Dholakia
\nBessemer Venture Partners
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nSomesh Dash
\nIVP
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nRobert Nelsen
\nARCH Venture Partners
\nChicago Booth<\/p>\n
\nAlexander Lazovsky
\nScale-Up
\nNorthwestern Kellogg (Kellogg-Recanati EMBA)<\/p>\n
\nApoorv Agrawal
\nAltimeter
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nAnne Dwane
\nVillage Global
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nMichelangelo Volpi
\nIndex Ventures
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nKatherine Boyle
\nAndreessen Horowitz
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nAshu Garg
\nFoundation Capital
\nIIM Bangalore (PGP)<\/p>\n
\nYasmin Razavi
\nSpark Capital
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nSujay Jaswa
\nWndrCo
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nYan-David Erlich
\nB Capital
\nStanford GSB<\/p>\n
\nMax Gazor
\nStriker Venture Partners
\nHarvard Business School<\/p>\n
\nMary D\u2019Onofrio
\nCrosslink
\nYale SOM<\/p>\n
\nSource: Ilya Strebulaev, Stanford GSB<\/p>\n