Indian immigrants built 96 unicorns in America, now worth more than the German stock market

India is the single largest source of immigrant founders behind America’s billion-dollar startup companies, with 96 such companies of Indian origin, according to new research. National Endowment for American Politics. The number puts India well ahead of all other countries and comes at a time when US immigration policies are becoming more restrictive, raising questions about whether the conditions that have created this concentration of wealth creation remain intact.

India leads all nations in the production of US unicorn founders, and it’s not close

The NFAP analysis, which examined the country of origin of the founders of all 775 US unicorn companies as of April 2026, found India at the top of the list with 96 billion companies. Israel came in second with 60, followed by the United Kingdom with 47, China with 41, Canada with 30, Russia with 23, France with 21, Germany with 18, Ukraine with 16 and Australia with 14. Pakistan and Romania contributed their founders to 10 billion companies.

Immigrant entrepreneurs from 76 countries have contributed to the founding of America’s unicorn companies, reflecting the breadth of the global talent stream flowing into America’s startup economy.

The extent of India’s contribution becomes particularly striking when compared to the size of the Indian diaspora in the United States. Of the approximately five million Indian immigrants living in America, roughly one in 50,000 have started a company valued at one billion dollars or more.

Five Indian immigrant founders who built the biggest fortunes in America

The breadth of India’s contribution to American business is most visible at the individual level. According to Forbes 2025, the richest Indian immigrants are American billionaire founders Jay Chaudhry, founder and CEO of cyber firm Zscaler, with a net worth of $13.1 billion. Chaudhry was born in Panoh, a small town in Himachal Pradesh without running water or electricity, before building one of the world’s most valuable cyber security companies out of San Jose, California.

Read also | New York loses nearly $74 million for failing to revoke 33,000 illegal immigrant trucker licenses

Next is Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and founder of venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, with a net worth of $9.2 billion. Khosla studied at IIT Delhi, Carnegie Mellon and Stanford before reshaping Silicon Valley’s funding landscape over several decades.

Rakesh Gangwal, co-founder of IndiGo, India’s largest low-cost airline, and former chairman of US Airways Group, has a net worth of $6.6 billion. Gangwal studied at IIM Lucknow and later completed his MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania before building his aerospace empire across two continents.

Romesh Wadhwani, founder of Symphony Technology Group, a US-based technology and private equity firm, has amassed a net worth of $5 billion, with his firm investing in AI-driven enterprise technology companies.

Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and former co-CEO of Workday, an enterprise software company, rounds out the top five with a net worth of $3.3 billion. Founded in California, Workday has grown to become one of the dominant human resource and financial management software platforms worldwide.

Immigrants built 59% of America’s billion-dollar startup economy

The research found that immigrants founded or co-founded 59% of all privately held U.S. startups currently valued at one billion dollars or more, accounting for 455 of the 775 unicorn companies tracked by NFAP. This number represents an increase from the 55% reported in NFAP reports published in 2018 and 2022.

Read also | US Suspends Immigrant Visa Processing for 75 Countries – FAQ

When the lens is widened to include children of immigrants, the proportion rises further. About two-thirds, or 66%, of America’s billion-dollar companies were founded or co-founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Nearly 80% of all US unicorn companies have either an immigrant founder or an immigrant in a key leadership role, such as CEO or VP of Engineering.

The growth trajectory over the last decade is considerable. In 2018, the United States had 91 unicorn companies, of which 50, or 55%, had immigrant founders. By April 2026, the total had grown to 775 US unicorn companies, with 455 having at least one immigrant founder. This represents a 750% increase in the number of unicorn companies and more than an 800% increase in the number with immigrant founders in eight years.

A $5 trillion economy built in America by immigrant founders

The collective valuation of 455 immigrant-founded unicorn companies is $5 trillion, a figure that exceeds the total stock market capitalization of all but seven countries in the world, including the United Kingdom and Germany. If unicorn companies with at least one immigrant founder that have been publicly traded since 2016 are included, the total value exceeds $5.8 trillion.

Read also | Could the US be facing a food crisis due to crackdown on immigrants? The Department of Labor warns

The most valuable companies with immigrant founders include SpaceX at $1.5 trillion, Anthropic at $965 billion, OpenAI at $852 billion, Databricks at $134 billion, Stripe at $106.7 billion, Ramp Financial at $32 billion, Safe Superintelligence at $32 billion, and Anysphere at $29 billion. Among companies that have gone public, the combined market capitalization of immigrant-founded unicorns exceeds $837 billion, a group that includes Palantir, Uber, CrowdStrike, Cloudflare, Robinhood, Zoom Video and Moderna.

NFAP research argues that the absence of these founders would have profound structural consequences for the American economy. Because each co-founder materially shapes a company’s trajectory, the analysis concludes that America would likely have fewer than half the billion-dollar companies, hundreds of thousands fewer jobs and up to $5 trillion less wealth if foreign-born founders were not allowed into the country.

From $16 on arrival to a $3.5 billion company: the story of an immigrant founder

The research includes individual case studies that illustrate a broader pattern. The father of Munjal Shah, CEO and co-founder of Hippocrates AI, came to the United States on a steamer with $16 and traveled to graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in India, Shah moved to Silicon Valley at the age of seven.

Read also | US Homeland Security says Minnesota has deported hundreds of criminal immigrants

In 2023, he founded Hippocratic AI, a company that uses AI to deliver what he describes as “deep healthcare expertise” to patients, backed by a network of more than 7,500 US-licensed physicians. The company now employs 190 people and is valued at $3.5 billion.

Each of the 15 immigrants built two or more billion-dollar companies, six from India

NFAP identified 15 immigrants who founded two or more billion-dollar companies. Six of these 15 were born in India: Mohit Aron, Jyoti Bansal, Ashutosh Garg, Arvind Jain, Sachin Nayyar and Ajeet Singh.

The full list covers origins from around the world: Noubar Afeyan from Lebanon, Al Goldstein from Uzbekistan, Michael Gronager from Denmark, Ignacio Martinez from Spain, Christopher Ré from France, Ion Stoica from Romania, Ilya Sutskever from Canada and Vlad Tenev from Bulgaria.

Read also | 2 people shot by Border Patrol agent in Portland amid immigration crackdown

Born in South Africa, Elon Musk is listed as the founder or co-founder of four companies valued at one billion dollars or more: SpaceX, OpenAI, The Boring Company and Neuralink, in addition to serving as CEO of Tesla.

Afeyan holds the record among the group for founding five companies that have achieved Unicorn valuations: Moderna, which has since gone public, along with Indigo Ag, Generate Biomedicines, Tessera Therapeutics and Lila Sciences.

International students disproportionately fuel America’s unicorn pipeline

The research pays particular attention to the journey from international student to company founder, a journey taken by nearly a quarter of all US unicorn founders. About 183 of America’s 775 billion-dollar companies, or 24%, have at least one founder who first came to the United States on a student visa. In these companies, 233 individual international students became founders or co-founders.

Companies founded by international alumni employ an average of 1,123 people each and have a collective valuation of $3.5 trillion, more than $4 trillion when those that have since gone public are included.

Read also | US Immigration may reject applications due to an invalid designation, but still retain the fee

The academic pipeline feeding this group is heavily focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematical disciplines. In US universities, foreign students make up 80% of full-time graduates enrolled in computer and information sciences, 75% in electrical and computer engineering, 62% in mathematics and statistics, and the majority in industrial engineering, civil engineering, and mechanical engineering.

International students can routinely remain in the United States long-term only after securing H-1B status or an employment-based green card, a process that NFAP says is increasingly uncertain under current immigration conditions.

Jobs and economic scale of immigrant-founded companies

In terms of employment, SpaceX leads all immigrant-founded unicorns with 25,700 employees, followed by REEF Technology with 18,000, Stripe with 10,000, Gopuff with 9,400 and Databricks with 8,000. Other notable employers in the group include Brandtech Group, Deel, Cohesity, OpenAI and Notion Labs.

Read also | Factbox-Eleven died in US immigration custody this year, ICE says

The NFAP research places its findings explicitly in the context of tightening US immigration policy, concluding that the data demonstrate measurable economic costs of restricting the channels through which immigrant entrepreneurs have historically entered and remained in the country.

Key things

Indian immigrants lead the way in founding US unicorn companies, with 96 of them valued at $5 trillion.
Immigrant entrepreneurs have built 59% of America’s billion-dollar startup economy.
International students drive a significant portion of America’s unicorn pipeline.