NYU's innovation ecosystem is delivering outsized impact on multiple fronts—entrepreneurship, research, and technology transfer.

We are proud to foster a community where groundbreaking research fuels industry-leading startups founded by both students and faculty. In fact, startups founded by students and faculty have collectively raised over $100 billion to date.

Let's take a deeper dive to explore some of our rankings and metrics that define our University-wide innovation ecosystem.

Startups

What do Perplexity, Opentrons, Wrapbook, OpenAI, and Polymarket all have in common? One, they're all tech unicorns, and two, they were all started by NYU students and faculty. But it's not just tech where NYU founders shine - from consumer goods, to non-profits, to SaaS companies, NYU founders are creating category-defining companies. Just last month, Pitchbook's University Rankings and Fast Co. highlighted some of the ways entrepreneurship at NYU is thriving:

• >$100 Billion Raised by NYU Founders (Pitchbook's University Rankings, 2025):
  • $16.2B raised by undergrads
  • $87.6B raised by grad students
  • In top 10 universities for startups from grad students and female founders, globally
• #8 "Ignition" School (Fast Co. & Inc. Magazine, Ignition School Rankings, 2025): For the second year in a row, NYU has made the top 10 list for universities that are "shaping the next generation of entrepreneurs and business innovators."

Research

The size of NYU's research enterprise has skyrocketed in the past decade, thanks to the world-class faculty and administrators who fuel our global university research ecosystem. NSF's Herd Rankings and the Chronicle of Higher Education showcase our upward trajectory:

• $1.5 Billion in Research Expenditures(NSF Herd Rankings, 2023; last reported year)
  • NYU 2.5x research expenditures since 2015
  • #1 in New York State, and #12 nationally in research expenditures
  • 2nd fastest-growing research university in the U.S., in terms of research expenditures (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2024)

IP Creation

With over 1,000 faculty and such a robust research enterprise, it's no surprise that the innovations developed in NYU research labs have stimulated an outsized rate of IP generation. Each year, AUTM captures key technology transfer progress indicators:

• NYU is in the U.S. Top 5 for licensing income, taking into account cumulative income data from the past 15 years.
• 1,600 U.S. patents have been awarded
• >240 Startups with University IP have spun out of the University, solidifying NYU's ranking in the top #10 in the U.S. for startups formed with university IP.

Taken together, these stats capture a snapshot of NYU's momentum—innovation, people, and partnerships moving from lab and classroom to market at record pace.

Special Thanks

Thank you to NYU Technology Opportunities & Ventures, NYU's Office for Chief Research Officer, and the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute for their help in providing the statistics for this feature. More broadly, thank you to the many administrators, faculty, students, startup mentors, investors, and donors who collectively contribute to the success of NYU's research and entrepreneurial ecosystem each day.