55% of American unicorns founded by immigrants; Indians top the chart

Over half of America’s start-ups (319 out of 582 or 55 per cent) valued at $1 billion or more have been founded by immigrants. As the country of origin for immigrant founders in the US, Indians top the charts with 66 companies. Israelis followed suit with the second highest number of billion-dollar companies at 54.  

The UK, Canada, China, France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Australia, Romania, Nigeria, South Korea, New Zealand, Pakistan, Argentina and several other countries also contributed to US’ start-up ecosystem, according to a recent National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) report.  

The report also identified 10 founders who founded two or more unicorns. These included Elon Musk, Mohit Aron, Jyoti Bansal, Ashutosh Garg, Ajeet Singh, Al Goldstein, Noubar Afeyan, Ignacio Martinez, Ion Stoica and Sebastian Thrun. Four of the 10 founders were born in India before immigrating to the US.  

As per this report, the collective value of the unicorns founded by immigrants stood at $1.2 trillion. This is more than the companies listed on major stock markets like Brazil Stock Exchange ($925 billion); Madrid Stock Exchange ($727 billion); Singapore Exchange ($679 billion); Indonesia Exchange ($620 billion); Stock Exchange of Thailand ($613 billion); Moscow Exchange ($579 billion); Italian Stock Exchange ($507 billion); and Mexican Stock Exchange ($498 billion). 

Interestingly, immigrant-founded American companies like SpaceX ($125 billion), Stripe ($95 billion), Instacart ($39 billion), Databricks ($38 billion), Epic Games ($31.5 billion), Miro ($17.5 billion) and Discord ($15 billion) have the highest valuations.