Community

Ten Pakistanis among Unicorn Founders in America

By Riaz Haq
CA

There are ten Pakistani immigrants who have been included among founders or co-founders of unicorns in America, according to a recent study by the National Foundation for American Policy ( NFAP ). A unicorn is a startup with a valuation of at least one billion US dollars.

Immigrant entrepreneurs of US unicorns are diverse, hailing from 76 different countries. India, with 96 companies, is the leading country of origin for the immigrant founders of US billion-dollar companies. Immigrants from Israel founded the second-most billion-dollar companies with 60, followed by the United Kingdom (47), China (41), Canada (30), Russia (23), France (21), Germany (18), Ukraine (16), Australia (14), Pakistan (10) and Romania (10). Some companies were founded by entrepreneurs from the same country or immigrants from multiple countries.

Why are Indian entrepreneurs leading the pack of unicorn founders/co-founders in America? The key reason is that “t he great Indian brain drain ” is accelerating with the country rapidly losing its best and brightest to the West, particularly the United States. Large presence of the Indian immigrant unicorn founders in America is attributed to the fact that most immigrant founders come to the US as students or H1B workers, categories dominated by Indians. Over 80% of the H1B visas go to Indian applicants. India also leads in sending students to study in US universities.

Unicorns in America. Source: NFAP

Pakistan, too, is suffering brain drain but not on the same scale as India. Most prominent among Pakistan-origin unicorn founders/cofounders are Karachi-born Sualeh Asif, Lala Moosa-born Qasar Younis, Karachi’s NED University alumnus Rehan Jalil and Pakistani-American serial entrepreneur Zia Chishti.

26 year old Karachi born Sualeh Asif , cofounder of Cursor (Anysphere) recently joined the list of Forbes Billionaires after Cursor reached a $29.3 billion valuation in November 2025, according to Forbes magazine.

43 year old Qasar Younis , a Lala Moosa born Harvard-educated Pakistani-American, is the CEO of Applied Intuition, a physical AI and autonomous vehicle software firm valued at $15 billion. Younis's resume includes his role as Chief Operating Officer of Y-Combinator, a spawning ground for tech giants Dropbox, Airbnb, and Stripe in Silicon Valley, according to Fortune Magazine.

Rehan Jalil, a fellow alumnus of NED University in Karachi, founded AI-powered data privacy and governance platform Security.AI. The startup has now been acquired by Veeam for $1.725 billion.

Zia Chishti is a serial entrepreneur from Pakistan. He founded Afiniti.AI which reached a $1.6 billion valuation back in 2017. He founded his first company Align Technology in 1997 in Silicon Valley. It creates clear plastic braces for straightening teeth by using advanced 3-D computer imaging. The technology now trademarked as Invisalign has helped millions of people straighten their teeth for a beautiful smile without enduring the pain and unsightly looks of the traditional steel brackets and wires used in orthodontics. Align Technology is now valued at $10 billion.

The NFAP study found that immigrants have founded or co-founded 59% (455 of 775) of America’s privately held startup companies valued at $1 billion or more. That is an increase from 55% in NFAP reports released in 2018 and 2022.

Approximately two-thirds (66%) of US billion- dollar companies (unicorns) were founded or cofounded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Nearly 80% of America’s unicorn companies (privately held, billion-dollar companies) have an immigrant founder or an immigrant in a key leadership role, such as CEO or vice president of engineering. Almost one in four US billion- dollar companies, or 24%, have a founder who came to America as an international student. The research shows the importance of immigrants in cutting-edge companies and the US economy at a time when US immigration policies have grown more restrictive.

The collective value of the 455 immigrant-founded billion-dollar companies is $5.0 trillion, which is more than the total market value of companies listed on stock markets in all but 7 countries, including the UK and Germany, and a demonstration of the wealth-creating power of immigrants. The collective value of immigrant-founded billion-dollar companies rises to over $5.8 trillion if one includes unicorn companies that have gone public since 2016.

(Riaz Haq is a Silicon Valley-based Pakistani American analyst and writer. He blogs at www.riazhaq.com)