Which MBA founders and their startups have pulled in the most outside funding over the past five years? In its October 2025 release, Poets & Quants asked top business schools to submit data on startups founded from January 1, 2020, through December 31, 2024, as long as at least one founder held an MBA in that same timeframe. The result: a ranking of the 100 highest-funded MBA startups, based on total external capital raised.
Together, those 100 startups have raised about $7.56 billion (a slight uptick over 2024) — a sum heavily weighted by the top two names, which alone accounted for $3.5 billion of that total.
While fintech and software continue to dominate many top slots, what stands out about this cohort is the proportion of founders chasing “mission-first” opportunities — climate, agtech, biotech, and public welfare. In that spirit, here are three standout ventures from the list.
FarmRaise — Streamlining Capital Access for Farmers
Founder / MBA: Jayce Hafner, Stanford GSB
Core mission: Provide a centralized platform to help farmers secure and manage grants, loans, and financial tools to scale operations, improve profitability, and increase sustainability.
FarmRaise epitomizes a new wave of “infrastructure for impact” — rather than disrupting agriculture with a flashy product, it lowers the barrier to capital for growers who often under-access financial support. The idea: many farming households and small agribusinesses struggle to navigate the patchwork of regional, federal, and private subsidy programs; FarmRaise aggregates and guides.
While specific funding rounds for FarmRaise aren’t detailed in P&Q’s summary, its inclusion among the 100 highest-funded MBA startups underscores the traction and investor confidence in “real-world problem” models.
HOPO Therapeutics — Targeting Heavy-Metal Toxicity with Novel Therapeutics
Founder / MBA: Hannah Weber, UC Berkeley Haas (MBA / MPH)
Focus: Developing the first oral therapy designed to selectively chelate and remove heavy metals (lead, radioactive elements) from the human body, with high specificity and minimal side effects.
One of HOPO’s breakthroughs: it secured a BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) contract worth up to $226 million, subject to milestones and development outcomes.
The initial tranche (~$9.4 million) will back toxicology, pharmacology, manufacturing feasibility, and nonclinical studies.
Earlier, HOPO also won a smaller $1.78 million ARPA-E grant for a collaborative project involving extraction of rare earths from seaweed, demonstrating its capacity to straddle biomedical and environmental science.
Given the dearth of treatments for chronic lead poisoning, radioactive contamination, and other heavy-metal exposures — especially therapies that can be administered orally — HOPO sits at a high-impact intersection of public health and biotech innovation.
Mantel — Lowering the Cost of Carbon Capture
Founder / MBA: Cameron Halliday, MIT Sloan MBA / PhD in Chemical Engineering
Mission: Make carbon capture affordable and scalable, particularly for heavy-emitting industrial processes (boilers, furnaces, kilns) via novel molten-salt / borate-based capture systems.
The problem Mantel tackles: conventional carbon capture has struggled with high capital and energy costs, and inefficiencies that limit deployment. Halliday argues their molten borate approach can cut costs by more than half, making carbon capture viable even in challenging industrial settings.
In September 2024, Mantel closed a $30 million Series A round — led by Shell Ventures and Eni Next — to scale from lab to industrial pilot.
The funds will support a tenfold-upscale pilot (capturing ~1,800 tonnes CO₂ per year) beyond their lab scale (~0.5 tonne/day) and further validate the thermal integration of their system.
Mantel is also resident at The Engine, MIT’s deep-tech accelerator, giving access to infrastructure and domain support.
Themes, Trends & What to Watch
1. From Hype to Hard Problems
The fact that mission-oriented startups like FarmRaise, HOPO, and Mantel made it onto the “highest-funded” list signals an investor appetite beyond just scale or flavor-of-the-month categories. The value of real-world problem-solving is gaining traction in the MBA-founder ecosystem.
2. Deep Tech + Domain Expertise
These ventures underscore a growing trend: combining technical depth (e.g. chemistry, biology, agronomy) with business acumen (via MBA training) to bring scalable solutions. That melding gives them both credibility and execution ability.
3. Milestone-Driven Capital Inflection Points
Each of these startups has secured funding aligned with pivotal scaling or validation steps — pilot tests, therapeutic trials, regulatory milestones. The trajectory from lab → pilot → commercialization remains capital-intensive, but investors appear willing to back that bridge.
4. Institutional & Government Support
HOPO’s BARDA contract, Mantel’s industrial partnerships, and FarmRaise’s alignment with agricultural funding frameworks all point to one thing: to tackle grand challenges, startups often must plug into institutional programs, not just VC capital.
5. What’s Next? Surveillance & Follow-On Rounds
- HOPO: Success in its BARDA milestones, safe human trials, and scale manufacturing are key watchpoints.
- Mantel: Translating pilot results to integrated industrial deployment will test the economics and engineering robustness.
- FarmRaise: Scaling across geographies and proving retention / outcomes for farmers will determine its defensibility.
10 Top-Funded MBA Startups Of 2025
Here is a table of the 10 Top-Funded MBA Startups of 2025 based on the Poets & Quants list. (Note: schools, founders, and funding are drawn from public reporting. Some rounding or estimates may apply.)
| 2025 Rank (2024) | Startup | $ Raised (millions) | MBA Founder(s) | School | Industry / Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tamara | 2,400.00 | Abdulmohsen Al Babtain | London Business School | FinTech / BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) (Poets&Quants for Execs) |
| 2 | Capchase | 1,100.00 | Luis Basagoiti Marqués | INSEAD | FinTech / revenue-based financing (Poets&Quants) |
| 3 | Poolside | 626.00 | Eiso Kant | IE Business School | AI / Software / Consumer tech (Poets&Quants for Execs) |
| 4 | AtoB | 263.51 | Tushar Misra | UC Berkeley Haas | Transportation / B2B payments & logistics finance (Poets&Quants for Execs) |
| 5 | HOPO Therapeutics | 227.00 | Hannah Weber | UC Berkeley Haas | Biopharma / Therapeutics for heavy-metal poisoning (Poets&Quants for Execs) |
| 6 | Pathway Homes | 225.00 | Kyle Ruane | UCLA Anderson | Real Estate / Housing & community services (Poets&Quants for Execs) |
| 7 | Lyra Collective (formerly Forum Brands) | 220.85 | Brenton Howland, Ruben Amar | Stanford GSB | E-commerce / consumer brands (Poets&Quants for Execs) |
| 8 | Autograph | 205.00 | Josh Payne | Stanford GSB | Financial software / digital identity & collectibles (Poets&Quants for Execs) |
| 9 | Arc Technologies | 192.50 | Raven Jiang, Nick Lombardo, Don Muir | Stanford GSB | Financial software / infrastructure (Poets&Quants for Execs) |
| 10 | Nominal | 102.50 | Cameron McCord, Bryce Strauss | Harvard Business School | Business / Productivity software (Poets&Quants for Execs) |
Final Thoughts
The 2025 Poets & Quants ranking of the 100 highest-funded MBA startups is more than a leaderboard—it’s a reflection of where the next wave of founder ambition lies. While fintech and SaaS remain foundational engines, the rising profiles of entities like FarmRaise, HOPO Therapeutics, and Mantel show that MBA founders are increasingly leaning into impact with capital intensity.
They remind us: the intersection of business training + real domain depth can generate startups capable of tackling society’s hardest problems — from clean energy to environmental health to sustainable agriculture.