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Poets&Quants

The 100 Highest-Funded MBA Startups Of 2026

CustomerThink

Eliminating the Coordination Tax – Interview with Dan O’Connell of Front

Bloomberg News

Diesel’s Record Run Sidelines Truckers and Hits Voters’ Wallets

KXJZ-FM (Sacramento, CA)

Fact-checking Becerra and Hilton in the California governor’s debate on CNN

S&P Global Market Intelligence

Vote could spur moderate California energy policies amid transition: analysts

InfoWorld

Why faster AI coding can mean harder engineering

From the Magazine

Magazine cover showing person in a blazer and button up shirt with a stethoscope around their neck.

All Heart

Jason Bellet, BS 14, co-founded Eko Health to help reinvent the 200-year-old stethoscope as an AI-powered device—now used by more than 700,000 clinicians across five continents. UC Berkeley Haas honors him with its 2026 Leading Through Innovation Award for helping revolutionize cardiopulmonary care.

Smiling person covered in paint is wearing wearing a tie-dye shirt outdoors in front of a group of people.

Conjuring Magic

Iris Wedeking, MBA 08, founded Kesem—a free nationwide camp for children whose parents face cancer—which has since supported more than 90,000 young people. Decades later, it became a lifeline for the daughters of Emily Miller and Patrick DeNeale, both MBA 01, in an unexpected UC Berkeley Haas connection.

Person in a blue blazer and white shirt speaks in front of a screen that reads: "2026 Berkeley Culture Connect Conference."

Adaptive Leadership

At UC Berkeley Haas’ eighth annual Culture Connect Conference, more than 200 top business leaders and academics—including OpenAI chief economist Ronnie Chatterji and UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons—tackled how to guide teams through AI, economic uncertainty, and the changing nature of work while preserving culture and humanity.

A grid of portraits of more than 50 people of different ages and ethnicities.

Distorted Reality

A UC Berkeley Haas study in Nature, analyzing 1.4 million images and videos plus nine large language models, finds women are consistently portrayed as younger than men across online platforms—a distortion strongest in high-status jobs and amplified by AI in ways that could widen real labor-market gaps.

Portrait of a person with gray hair in a black blazer and blue tie against a black background.

Frank McGorman, MBA 82, Retired Forensic Accountant, FBI

Frank McGorman, MBA 82, used his UC Berkeley Haas degree for two decades of Silicon Valley finance roles before making a surprising mid-career pivot: running the forensic accounting department at the FBI’s San Francisco field office, where his team worked cases including the Theranos investigation.

Illustration of a book with a blueprint of hospital beds overlayed by red arrows mimicking a playbook. Circles denote NP for nurse practitioner and MD for doctors.

Code Blue

A UC Berkeley Haas study of 1.1 million emergency-room visits finds that how hospitals deploy nurse practitioners and physicians matters as much as which they hire—with no difference in patient mortality but meaningful gaps in cost and follow-up care.

Person with dark chin-length hair wearing a black button-up shirt, earrings, and a nose ring sits in front of an ironwork railing.

Nancy Hoque, MBA 19, Sales Finance Director, Adobe

Nancy Hoque, MBA 19, a former engineer and entrepreneur, now directs sales finance and revenue strategy for Adobe’s multibillion-dollar sales organization—and is exploring how AI can transform the finance function, drawing on early advice from UC Berkeley Haas about leading through others.

Perspectives

From the MBA Blog

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UC Berkeley Haas

Haas School of Business

@BerkeleyHaas

Alex Zekoff arrived at Haas in 2017 with and went “all-in as a Berkeley Bear.” He found his people. And when he left, he carried a belief—almost irrational in its confidence—that he could go build something from nothing. By 2019, he was trying to build in a space that didn't yet have a name. "I didn't even know what to call it. I was just like—’digital workers.’ That was the term." What he was working on is what’s now called agentic AI. He counts himself lucky to find a mentor: Associate Professor Omri Even-Tov. The company Alex built, healthcare management platform Thoughtful AI, sold for $600 million in five years. But its rapid rise doesn’t mean it was easy. "The first three years were crazy." While it was thrilling, it also involved sleepless nights and many “decisions that don't show up in press releases.” Alex came out of it with a passion to share back all that he’s learned with the next generation of entrepreneurs—who are increasingly AI natives. "I think students need to hear what it's like to go build something so fast. I wanted to bring that realness to the classroom," Alex says. Together, he and Even-Tov built the AI Entrepreneurship course—a structured accelerator launched last spring for 60 MBA students modeled on the Y Combinator experience, with A-list mentors from Nvidia, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and others joining every class session. The 27 student teams had 13 weeks to go from identifying a problem to defining a possible exit strategy. He and Even-Tov carried the experience through with a full Demo Day, filling an auditorium with Silicon Valley VCs, alumni, and judges. Of the 27 teams who presented, 20 committed to keep working on their ideas after semester’s end. Six were accepted into accelerators like SkyDeck and Vercel. Zekoff’s message to students: The gatekeepers are gone. "AI is now making everyone a builder. It’s a beautiful moment for everyone to come together and think from first principles—what are the ideas of the future? Organizations got big, but someone in this class could potentially create a company to disrupt Oracle or SAP or Salesforce." Zekoff is returning next semester for round 2 of the course with Even-Tov.

Alex Zekoff arrived at Haas in 2017 with and went “all-in as a Berkeley Bear.” He found his people. And when he left, he carried a belief—almost irrational in its confidence—that he could go build…
UC Berkeley Haas

Haas School of Business

@BerkeleyHaas

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what are online images saying about women at work? Online, women are shown as younger than men—even in jobs where they're actually older on average. The gap is widest in high-status roles and those with the biggest pay gaps. And when ChatGPT evaluated otherwise identical resumes, it rated older men higher. On the new episode of The Culture Kit podcast, Haas Assistant Professor Solène Delecourt joins hosts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to unpack what this means for your hiring pipeline—and how leaders can counter it. #BerkeleyHaas #UCBerkeley 🎧 Listen at the link in our bio.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what are online images saying about women at work? Online, women are shown as younger than men—even in jobs where they’re actually older on average. The gap…
UC Berkeley Haas

Haas School of Business

@BerkeleyHaas

Our founders are questioning the status quo in space, health, AI apps, and beyond. Four of our grads are featured among the top 26 of Poets & Quants 100 highest-funded MBA ventures of 2026. 🚀 HOPO Therapeutics, co-founded by Hannah Weber, MBA/MPH 23, is No. 5 on the list, raising a total of $226 million. The startup develops oral treatments for heavy-metal poisoning and radiological exposure. Kaon AI, (No. 16) co-founded by Henry Wang, MBA 22, raised $70 million; Space Kinetic, (No. 19) co-founded by Ryan Sullivan, MBA 22, raised $63 million; and Aurelius Systems, (No. 26) co-founded by Michael LaFramboise, MBA/MEng 23, raised $52 million. #BerkeleyHaas #UCBerkeley

Our founders are questioning the status quo in space, health, AI apps, and beyond. Four of our grads are featured among the top 26 of Poets & Quants 100 highest-funded MBA ventures of 2026. 🚀 HOPO…
UC Berkeley Haas

Haas School of Business

@BerkeleyHaas

Will Rosenzweig has spent a quarter century teaching, mentoring, and backing food systems innovators at UC Berkeley and Haas. Now he's teamed up with former student Elaine Hsu, MBA 19, to launch the Collaborative for Food Systems Innovation, built to equip the next generation of leaders to reimagine how we grow, share, and eat food. #BerkeleyHaas #UCBerkeley 🔗 Read more at the link in our bio.

Will Rosenzweig has spent a quarter century teaching, mentoring, and backing food systems innovators at UC Berkeley and Haas. Now he’s teamed up with former student Elaine Hsu, MBA 19, to launch the…
UC Berkeley Haas

Haas School of Business

@BerkeleyHaas

Congrats to Ken Ahmann, EMBA 28, (pictured with Nvidia’s Madison Huang at a recent executive MBA event), on his induction into the California Energy Commission's Clean Energy Hall of Fame! 🎉 As COO of Colusa Energy and Tribal Utility Authority Director for the Colusa Indian Community, Ken helped build the nation's first tribally owned modern microgrid, capping more than 20 years of work advancing energy sovereignty, resilience, and reliability for tribal communities.

Congrats to Ken Ahmann, EMBA 28, (pictured with Nvidia’s Madison Huang at a recent executive MBA event), on his induction into the California Energy Commission’s Clean Energy Hall of Fame! 🎉 As COO…
UC Berkeley Haas

Haas School of Business

@BerkeleyHaas

Fundamentals of Agentic AI, created by Professor Alex Mas and Pepe Alonso, MBA 27 and AI intern at Google, starts with the idea that understanding AI requires students to look under the hood. That's why Mas and Alonso teach the basics of software and machine learning before students build their own agents. "If you want to do strategy for your company in AI and do not understand a bit about how AI works... it's like the CEO of McDonald's, who never tasted his own burger, trying to pretend he did," Alonso says. #BerkeleyHaas #UCBerkeley 🔗 Read about how Haas is rewiring the MBA for AI and a new era of work at the link in our bio.

Fundamentals of Agentic AI, created by Professor Alex Mas and Pepe Alonso, MBA 27 and AI intern at Google, starts with the idea that understanding AI requires students to look under the hood. That’s…
UC Berkeley Haas

Haas School of Business

@BerkeleyHaas

Meet Ashly Marquez, BS 27, a first-generation student whose dream of studying at Haas became a reality with scholarship support made possible through unrestricted funding. “Being born into a low-income family, I was stressed about tuition, living expenses, and whether or not I should be attending an institution such as Berkeley. This scholarship helped alleviate those concerns and allowed me to expand my horizons beyond studying.” Our generous donors fuel the people, programs, and initiatives at Haas that transform business around the globe. #BerkeleyHaas #UCBerkeley Explore our 2025-2026 UC Berkeley Haas Annual Report at the link in our bio to learn more about these inspiring stories—and see all that our community’s philanthropy made possible in the last year.

Meet Ashly Marquez, BS 27, a first-generation student whose dream of studying at Haas became a reality with scholarship support made possible through unrestricted funding. “Being born into a…
UC Berkeley Haas

Haas School of Business

@BerkeleyHaas

In this episode of the Leading at the Edge podcast, Alex Schultz reflects on nearly two decades at Meta, from his early work in product and growth marketing to becoming the company’s inaugural Chief Data Officer. Schultz shares insights on growth strategy, data systems, and Meta’s transition toward AI-driven data, analysis, and research. #BerkeleyHaas #UCBerkeley #LeadingAtTheEdge 🎧 Listen to the full episode here on your favorite podcast platform or at the link in our bio.

In this episode of the Leading at the Edge podcast, Alex Schultz reflects on nearly two decades at Meta, from his early work in product and growth marketing to becoming the company’s inaugural Chief…

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