Q3 2026: Facebook alumni started 3 new companies since 2025, more than any other company; San Francisco leads new company formation with 841; the most common sector move is from Software & IT into Artificial Intelligence. The graph now holds 73,739 founders and 42,763 companies.
Generated 2026-09-13 · window 2025–2026 vs 2023–2024
73,739founders in the graph
42,763companies with founders
78,437relationships
218startup mafias
Founder factories, 2025–2026
Companies whose alumni started the most companies founded in 2025–2026. Top: Facebook with 3 new companies started by 3 alumni.
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Where new companies are being founded, 2025–2026
Cities by companies founded in the window, with known founders. San Francisco 841 (was 569) · New York City 118 (was 178) · London 40 (was 42) · Los Angeles 25 (was 18) · Boston 17 (was 10)
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Sectors gaining founders, 2025–2026
Sectors by new companies with known founders. Enterprise Software 748 (was 692) · Industrials & Manufacturing 174 (was 55) · Software & IT 122 (was 76) · Fintech 117 (was 109) · Healthcare 114 (was 131)
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Where founders come from
For each founder, the sector of an earlier company they founded or worked at, against the sector of the company they founded later. Same-sector moves are excluded, so this is a map of crossover, not of volume.
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Method. All figures are computed from the founder graph on the generation date: companies with at least one known founder, excluding placeholder entries. “Alumni” means people who founded or worked at a company. The graph is incomplete and community-corrected, so treat rankings as indicative and tell us what we’re missing. Cite as “founders.io, State of the founder graph — Q3 2026”.