Two Israeli universities ranked among top 10 global universities for entrepreneurship

Two Israeli universities are ranked among the top 10 global universities for entrepreneurship in PitchBook’s 2025 ranking, published this week. Tel Aviv University was ranked seventh, maintaining the same position as in 2024. The Technion–Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa climbed six spots to place tenth.

The ranking measures universities worldwide by the proportion of graduate students who become entrepreneurs. U.S. institutions dominated the top positions, with the University of California, Berkeley in first place, followed by Stanford, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT. Notably, several leading American universities – including Yale, UCLA, Columbia, and Princeton – were ranked below Tel Aviv University (TAU) and the Technion.

TAU Chief Entrepreneurship and Innovation Officer Moshe Zviran welcomed the university’s high placement in the global ranking.

"The university is proud to continue to be the entrepreneurial university of the State of Israel. The fact that PitchBook ranks us at the top year after year is the best proof of our academic excellence and leadership in creating a generation of entrepreneurs who found companies, raise venture capital and move the Israeli economy forward," Zviran stated, as reported by Israel's Globes financial newspaper.

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan emphasized the university’s combined focus on science and applied research.

"Since its founding, the Technion has made it its mission to combine basic science with applied research," Sivan said.

"Technion alumni are the main economic engine of the State of Israel and are largely responsible for the creation of Israel’s ‘Startup Nation,’" he added.

Founded in 1912, the Technion is often described as Israel’s equivalent of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, Massachusetts.

Several other Israeli universities secured respectable places in this year’s ranking: Hebrew University of Jerusalem ranked 30th, Reichman University in Herzliya ranked 47th, Ben Gurion University of the Negev ranked 52nd, and Bar-Ilan University, based in Ramat Gan, ranked 90th.

Israel is known worldwide as the “Start-Up Nation,” with one of the highest concentrations of startup companies outside Silicon Valley, California. Tel Aviv is widely regarded as the country’s center of innovation and entrepreneurship.

In August 2023, Tel Aviv University was ranked the leading non-U.S. university for producing unicorn start-ups – privately held companies valued at $1 billion or more. At the time, Zviran attributed TAU’s achievement to both the caliber of its students and its growing emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation, saying, "We have achieved this status because we welcome the best students in a wide range of disciplines, and also because in recent years we have become proactive in the spheres of entrepreneurship and innovation."