The 100 Highest-Funded MBA Startups Of 2024

A group of founders of science- and technology-based startups pitch their ideas during an Endless Frontier Labs event at New York University’s Stern School of Business. The early-stage startup accelerator pairs current MBAs with massively scalable science and tech startups, including one from our annual list of the 100 highest-funded MBA startups. Photo credit: ©Myaskovsky, ©Jolly

As an MBA candidate at NYU Stern School of Business, Joanna Patsalis knew she wanted to pivot from cosmetics manufacturing to technology. She took a consulting experiential learning course, working for a semester on a strategy document about the Internet of Things (IoT) for a global tech firm.

It sparked a question that would shape the trajectory of Patsalis’ career: “How do we power those trillion IoT devices and how do we maintain them, especially when they are placed in harsh and austere environments?”

Patsalis, MBA ‘19, immersed herself in NYU’s deep entrepreneurial ecosystem while at Stern. In 2019, she was selected to FedTech in which business students are paired with tech inventors coming out of federal labs and research institutions. She worked with a group studying how to reliably power IoT devices without regular and costly upkeep, battery changes, or repairs.

Joanna Patsalis, MBA ’19, COO and co-founder of Direct Kinetic Solutions

“The founding inventors and I found that our team worked so well together, we didn’t want to stop the process after only a few months. Thus, Direct Kinetic Solutions was born,” says Patsalis, co-founder and COO of DKS, a company that designs and manufactures persistent power sources by harnessing the high energy density of beta-emitting isotopes.

The company aims to combine “the reliability of a power plant with the mobility of a battery,” providing continuous power anywhere on land, at sea, and in space. It has secured grants to develop power solutions for the U.S. Air Force, as well as garnered grants and awards from the National Security Innovation Capital and the Army Research Laboratory.

DKS has raised a total of $8 million to date, including a $2.04 million seed round that closed earlier this year. And it comes in at No. 92 on Poets&Quants’ annual list of the 100 highest-funded startups founded by MBAs.

The most valuable entrepreneurial resource Patsalis found at Stern?

“The network: classmates, faculty, advisors, investors, and more,” Patsalis tells P&Q.

“A big part of the journey also includes taking the initiative to try out the unknown; sign up and show up for opportunities, even if they may not be a direct ‘fit’ with what you think you need.”

P&Q’S TOP MBA STARTUPS OF 2024

Today, Poets&Quants presents our list of the 100 highest-funded MBA startups of 2024. As we’ve done each year since 2014, we solicited MBA-founded startups from the world’s best MBA programs to compile a list based on a single metric: how much funding a startup has raised in the past five years, the most accessible apples-to-apples comparison. (See our 2023 list here.)

To qualify for this year’s list, a startup had to be founded between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2023. The startup must also have had at least one MBA founder during that same timeframe. Funding amounts were cross-checked on Crunchbase.com. Numbers verified at the time of reporting were used to compile the list.

STARTUPS AT INSEAD & LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL TOP 2024’S LIST

Capchase, co-founded by Class of 2020 INSEAD MBA Luis Basagoiti Marqués, moved up from the No. 2 spot on our 2023 list to No. 1 this year. It raised a whopping $1.1 billion since it was founded in 2020, and was named in Forbes’ 2023 list of Next Billion-Dollar Startups.

Capchase offers SaaS companies an alternative to venture funding, providing access to capital based on a company’s future recurring revenue. It aims to give high-growth companies access to their revenue more quickly and with more predictability. Since its founding, it has funneled more than $2 billion to 4,000-plus companies, including $100 million to women- and minority-owned startups.

It is one of eight startups founded by INSEAD MBAs on this year’s list, raising a total of $1.35 billion. That’s the second highest total of any other school.

Tamara debuted at the No. 2 spot this year, raising $955.6 million since its 2020 launch. It was co-founded by London Business School alum Abdulmohsen Al Babtain (MBA ‘20), and claims to be Saudi Arabia’s first fintech unicorn. The company allows customers to break purchases into smaller, interest-free payments at more than 26,000 partner stores – including global brands like Ikea, H&M, Shein and more.

TOTAL FUNDING OF ALMOST $7 BILLION

In 2022, the 100 highest funded MBAstartups raised a record-breaking $7 billion, rebounding after a pandemic fueled slump in venture investing. The top 100 crushed that record in 2023, raising $9.2 billion.

2024 brought the total raised back down to earth. In all, the 100 startups on this year’s list raised $6.997 billion, perhaps a reflection of the tougher venture capital landscape founders of all stripes faced in the first quarters of this year.

“Venture capital (VC) investment has generally slowed down in 2024, continuing a trend that started in 2022,” Jane Khedair, executive director of London Business School’s Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital, tells Poets&Quants..

“MBAs who have accepted a correction in inflated valuations have typically been more successful at securing funding, although typically only once they have proven traction with revenues rather than at their initial launch stage. With many of today’s fintech’s being premised on AI, their ability to scale has driven their ability to attract substantial investment.”

Khedair tells P&Q that while macroeconomic pressures and regulatory hurdles persist, there are significant opportunities for startups in sectors like climate tech, healthtech, AI, and digital transformation. Government support, combined with a shift towards sustainability and profitability, is reshaping the startup ecosystem in Europe.

Our list compiled in 2021 was the first in which the pandemic had impacted the economy for more than a year. That list tracked companies founded between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2020. The 2022 list took into account funding raised in 2021 as investing bounced back, but just as we entered a new period of global uncertainty.

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