Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Indian-origin entrepreneurs outpace immigrant founders of US unicorns, having created or co-created startups worth over $96 billion, according to a study.
These immigrants founded 59% of American unicorns, with companies such as Perplexity AI, OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic driving innovation and jobs, the media reported on Friday.
Leading Indian businessman Anand Mahindra has applauded the achievements of Indian Americans.
Time to use the old American phrase: “You ain’t seen nothing yet..!”
Despite the challenges, Indian Americans will remain as entrepreneurial as ever
But the new stage will be right here within India where the startup boom has only just begun.
And it will surprise the world… https://t.co/Ke3ORMMotO
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) June 4, 2026
A unicorn startup is any privately held, venture-backed company that has achieved a valuation of USD 1 billion or more. The term was coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee in 2013 to highlight how statistically rare and mythical these highly successful companies once were.
The National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) said the Indian-born entrepreneurs account for the largest group of immigrant founders of billion-dollar companies, or unicorns, in the US.
It said that the combined valuation of the 455 immigrant-founded unicorns stands at USD 5 trillion.
The US-based non-profit organisation found that 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% (455 of 775) of America’s privately held startup unicorns.
The researchers 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%) of unicorns were founded or co-founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Nearly 80% 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 founded five companies that achieved valuations of USD 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 USD 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.
The highest-valued US unicorns with at least one immigrant founder are SpaceX (USD 1.5 trillion), Anthropic (USD 965 billion), OpenAI (USD 852 billion), Databricks (USD 134 billion), Stripe (USD 106.7 billion), Ramp Financial (USD 32 billion), Safe Superintelligence (USD 32 billion), Anysphere (USD 29.3 billion), Cerebras Systems (USD 23 billion), Epic Games (USD 22.5 billion), Chobani (USD 20 billion), Perplexity (USD 20 billion) and Miro (USD 17.5 billion).