Indian-origin founders launched 96 US unicorns, highest among immigrants

Indian-born entrepreneurs account for the largest group of immigrant founders of billion-dollar companies, or unicorns, in the US, according to a new study by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).

The US-based non-profit organisation found that 96 American unicorns were founded or co-founded by entrepreneurs of Indian origin. Among them is Perplexity AI, co-founded by Aravind Srinivas, which ranks 12th with a valuation of $20 billion.

According to the study, India tops the list of countries of origin for immigrant founders of US unicorns with 96 companies, followed by Israel (60 unicorns), the United Kingdom (47), China (41), Canada (30), Russia (23), France (21), Germany (18), Ukraine (16), Australia (14), Pakistan (10), and Romania (10).

The NFAP study, titled “Immigrants and US Billion-dollar Companies” and authored by Stuart Anderson, found that immigrants have founded or co-founded 59 per cent (455 of 775) of America’s privately held startup unicorns.

The research found that the privately held US billion-dollar startups with immigrant founders have created an average of 833 jobs per company.

Approximately two-thirds (66 per cent) of unicorns were founded or co-founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Nearly 80 per cent of US unicorns have either an immigrant founder or an immigrant in a key leadership role, such as CEO or vice president of engineering.

The NFAP study found that at least 15 immigrants, including Elon Musk, have founded two or more unicorns. Six Indian-origin founders – Mohit Aron, Jyoti Bansal, Ashutosh Garg, Arvind Jain, Sachin Nayyar, and Ajeet Singh – have made it to the coveted list.

Lebanese-born entrepreneur Noubar Afeyan has founded five companies that achieved valuations of $1 billion or more, including Moderna, Indigo Ag, Generate Biomedicines, Tessera Therapeutics, and Lila Sciences.

South Africa-born Elon Musk has founded or co-founded four companies valued at $1 billion or more -- SpaceX, OpenAI, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. He is also the CEO of Tesla.

The study also found that 183 US billion-dollar companies were founded by entrepreneurs who attended American universities as international students.

According to the NFAP, the combined valuation of the 455 immigrant-founded unicorns stands at $5 trillion.

The highest-valued US unicorns with at least one immigrant founder are SpaceX ($1.5 trillion), Anthropic ($965 billion), OpenAI ($852 billion), Databricks ($134 billion), Stripe ($106.7 billion), Ramp Financial ($32 billion), Safe Superintelligence ($32 billion), Anysphere ($29.3 billion), Cerebras Systems ($23 billion), Epic Games ($22.5 billion), Chobani ($20 billion), Perplexity ($20 billion) and Miro ($17.5 billion).