PhDs are the new MBAs for founders in the AI era, as college dropouts remain an outlier (www.businessinsider.com)

A Leonis Capital report analyzing the 100 fastest-growing AI startups finds the current crop of AI founders is younger, more technical and more research‑oriented than the software-era founders of the 2010s. Median founding age is 29 (vs. 34 previously), with many founders in their mid‑20s, and a notable concentration of PhDs, math Olympiad medalists and grads from elite schools (MIT/Stanford/Harvard). The “college dropout founder” narrative is increasingly an outlier, and most founding teams did not have long shared work histories before forming their startups. Structurally and commercially, AI startups look different: teams are smaller and flatter, CEOs often operate across management layers, and firms pivot faster as model capabilities evolve. Leonis attributes rapid monetization to AI’s ability to replace skilled labor — e.g., Cursor reached $100M ARR in a year — and to founders’ focus on productized models rather than marketplace or service plays. On the funding side, Y Combinator dominates pre‑seed/seed backing, while top VCs like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia are “moving upstream” into earlier rounds. For the AI/ML community this signals that deep technical and research expertise is becoming core product IP, affecting hiring, org design, go‑to‑market tempo and how investors allocate early capital.