Three New Rankings Spotlight the HEC Paris Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

From September 2026, three major rankings confirmed HEC Paris as one of Europe’s leading entrepreneurial ecosystems. The school entered the global top 10 of the PitchBook Universities Ranking for the first time, accounted for one in four French Tech 2030 laureates, and placed five startups in the Sifted AI 100.

Each ranking measures entrepreneurship from a different angle. PitchBook follows the money by counting the alumni who have founded venture-backed companies. French Tech 2030 backs the breakthrough technologies expected to underpin France’s technological sovereignty. The Sifted AI 100 identifies the startups shaping the next wave of European artificial intelligence. Taken together, they point to the same conclusion: the HEC Paris startup ecosystem is gaining ground on every front.

PitchBook University Rankings: HEC Paris Enters the Global Top 10 for the First Time

HEC Paris has entered the top 10 universities worldwide for producing entrepreneurs, in the graduate category of the ”Top 100 universities ranked for entrepreneur” 2026 PitchBook University Rankings. The School climbed eight places in a year.

Alongside Dealroom, PitchBook is one of the two reference databases for venture capital investors worldwide. Its annual ranking counts alumni who founded a company that raised venture funding between January 2015 and August 2026, based on more than 222,000 founders.

Three results stand out for HEC Paris:

• Global top 10 for graduate programs, a first for the School.
• No. 1 in continental Europe and third in Europe, behind Cambridge and Oxford, in the PitchBook European rankings.
• 11th worldwide in the female founders edition, a strong signal for the diversity of entrepreneurship at the School.

This visibility among investors makes the HEC Paris ecosystem even more attractive to students, entrepreneurs and startups.

French Tech 2030: one in four laureates linked to HEC Paris

22 of the 80 laureates in the 2026 cohort of French Tech 2030 are linked to the HEC Paris ecosystem, it's over 25%. In 2025, the School counted 17 startups, or 21% of the cohort.

Run by the French Tech Mission, the program supports startups for one year as they develop breakthrough technologies that are strategic for France's economic and industrial sovereignty. Most of them come out of research. This third cohort spans ten sectors, from AI and quantum to space and decarbonization.

The HEC Paris-linked laureates are present in eight of these sectors. They went through programs of the HEC Paris Innovation & Entrepreneurship ecosystem (HEC Challenge +, Creative Destruction Lab Paris, Incubateur HEC Paris) or were co-founded by HEC Alumni.

Sifted AI 100: five HEC startups among Europe's most promising AI companies

Five startups linked to HEC Paris feature in the Sifted AI 100 2026, roughly one third of the French companies in the ranking. Published by Sifted in partnership with venture capital firm N47, the list highlights 100 European startups with AI at the core of their business. 

Selected companies are independent, privately held, founded in 2019 or later and valued at under $1 billion. They are assessed on market opportunity, competitive differentiation and growth momentum.

Three of them, Tsuga, Qevlar AI and Orakl Oncology, are also French Tech 2030 laureates.

The 2026 edition confirms the growing specialization of European AI:

• Vertical AI takes the lead: industry-specific applications account for 51 companies, up from 41 in 2025. In health, finance, legal or recruitment, value comes from sector expertise.
• Agents move into execution: AI goes beyond conversational assistance and takes over entire workflows.
• AI enters the physical world: 14 companies work on robotics, construction or defense, up from 11 last year.

Laureates come from 17 countries, up from 12 in 2025. The UK, France and Germany still account for 70% of the ranking. London leads with 40 companies, ahead of Paris (15) and Berlin (9).
 

An Ecosystem That Supports Every Entrepreneurial Path

These three rankings reflect the diversity of entrepreneurial paths at HEC Paris. Some founders are graduates of the Grande École or the MBA. Others, often from research backgrounds, were supported by some of our programs: Incubateur HEC Paris, Creative Destruction Lab Paris or HEC Challenge +.

These programs are part of HEC Institute and its Centers, which connects research, education and innovation to build solutions to today’s major challenges. Entrepreneurship is central to how the Institute puts knowledge into action, and three of its eight centers of expertise are dedicated to it:

• The Incubation & Acceleration Center helps founders build their ventures and connects them with the HEC community.
• The Deep Tech Center supports science-based innovations in fields such as biotech, AI, quantum, climate and space.
• The Social Entrepreneurship Center uses entrepreneurship as a lever for inclusion and a fairer society.

We are proud to see the Institute recognized once again as one of Europe’s leading entrepreneurship hubs, and even prouder to see our results improve year after year. This progress reflects the work of the founders we support every day, from deep tech to applied AI, and from the very first idea all the way to scale-up. It also strengthens our commitment to making HEC Paris, the School of Solutions, the place where future founders choose to build.

Learn more

This back-to-school period builds on momentum already visible in 2025: Bpifrance, French Tech 2030, Station F Future 40, Impact 120 and LinkedIn Top Startups. 

Read the full review in our article HEC Paris Rankings 2025.

In 2025, the HEC Paris innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem supported 652 startups and companies.

Discover its programs, key figures and founder stories in the Annual Activity Report.