Ten Pakistanis Among Unicorn Founders in America

There are ten Pakistani immigrants 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

Four of Ten Pakistani-American Founders Listed Among Unicorns

Why are Indian entrepreneurs leading the pack of unicorn founders/co-founders in America?  The key reason is that “the 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 U.S. 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. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. economy at a time when U.S. 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.

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First Generation Pakistani-Americans Divorce Rate is the Third Lowest in the United States

Divorce rate among foreign-born Pakistani-Americans with children is the third lowest of all immigrants in the United States, according to research recently published by the US-based Institute of Family Studies. Foreign-born Indian-Americans' marriages tend to be the most stable, followed by those of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis living in America.  On the other end of the spectrum, the divorce rates among immigrants from Latin-America are the highest of all ethnic groups. 

 

Immigrants Marriage Stability. Source: IFS

Immigrants from Taiwan, Korea, China, and Japan, also have greater family stability than native-born Americans, as do immigrants from the Middle East and South America, according to the IFS report. Here’s the list of top 20 immigrant groups in the US leading in marriage stability: 

1. India - 94% 

2. Bangladesh - 90% 

3. Pakistan - 87% 

4. Taiwan - 86% 

5. Korea - 85% 

6. China - 84% 

7. Japan - 83% 

8. Poland - 80% 

9. Iran - 78% 

10. Canada - 78% 

11. Ukraine - 77% 

12. Vietnam - 77% 

13. Philippines - 76% 

14. United Kingdom - 74% 

15. Brazil - 73% 

16. Germany - 72% 

17. Venezuela - 72% 

18. Nigeria - 71% 

19. Russia - 68% 

20. Mexico - 68%

There are 326,709 foreign-born Pakistani immigrants of working age (18-64) in the United States, according to figures cited by the Institute of Family Studies. Of these, 87% have been married only once and are still married while 10% are on their second marriage, 2.4% are divorced while 0.6% never married. 

The Institute of Family Studies (IFS) is an advocacy group. The IFS mission is to "strengthen marriage and family life, and advance the well-being of children through research and public education".

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Pakistani-Americans Among Top 5 Upwardly Mobile Groups in the United States

A recent study shows that Pakistani-Americans are among 5 most upwardly mobile groups in the United States. Other top most upwardly groups are Chinese-Americans from Hong Kong, Taiwan and People's Republic of China and Indian-Americans.

US Offers Upward Mobility For Immigrants: 

Immigration to the United States continues to offer a route to escape poverty — if not for poor immigrants themselves, then for their sons, according to a study published by a team of economic historians at Princeton, Stanford and the University of California, Davis.

Average income rank of sons with parents in 25th percentile. Source: New York Times

Top 5 Upwardly Mobile Groups in America:

The study shows the adult outcomes of sons born in 1980 who grew up in poor families at about the 25th percentile of income distribution in the United States. Pakistani-American sons born in poor households are now at 59th percentile of income in the United States.

Sons of immigrants from Hong Kong in 25th percentile have the highest economic mobility are 64th percentile followed by China at 63rd, India at 62nd and Taiwan at 60th percentile. Sons of American born fathers are at 46th percentile, much lower than for the sons of immigrants. Only the sons of immigrants from the Caribbean island nations of  Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica have lower mobility.

Economic Mobility in Pakistan:

A 2012 study of 22 nations conducted by Prof Miles Corak for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has found income heritability to be greater in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, China and 5 other countries than in Pakistan.

The study's findings, presented by the author in testimony to the US Senate Finance Committee on July 6, 2012, rely on the computation of "inter-generational earnings elasticity" which the author explains as follows:

"(It) is the percentage difference in earnings in the child’s generation associated with the percentage difference in the parental generation. For example, an intergenerational elasticity in earnings of 0.6 tells us that if one father makes 100% more than another then the son of the high income father will, as an adult, earn 60% more than the son of the relatively lower income father. An elasticity of 0.2 says this 100% difference between the fathers would only lead to a 20% difference between the sons. A lower elasticity means a society with more mobility."

Intergenerational Mobility in Pakistan:

Corak calculates that the intergenerational earnings elasticity in Pakistan is 0.46, the same as in Switzerland. It means that a difference of 100%  between the incomes of a rich father and a poor father is reduced to 46% difference between their sons' incomes. Among the 22 countries studied, Peru, China and Brazil have the lowest economic mobility with inter-generational elasticity of 0.67, 0.60 and 0.58 respectively. The highest economic mobility is offered by Denmark (0.15), Norway (0.17) and Finland (0.18).

The author also looked at Gini coefficient of each country and found reasonably good correlation between Gini and intergenerational income elasticity.

 In addition to Corak, there are other reports which confirm that Pakistan has continued to offer  significant upward economic and social mobility to its citizens over the last two decades. Since 1990, Pakistan's middle class had expanded by 36.5% and India's by only 12.8%, according to an ADB report titled "Asia's Emerging Middle Class: Past, Present And Future".

 More evidence of upward mobility is offered by recent Euromonitor market research indicating that Pakistanis are seeing rising disposable incomes. It says that there were 1.8 million Pakistani households (7.55% of all households) and 7.9 million Indian households (3.61% of all households) in 2009 with disposable incomes of $10,001 or more. This translates into 282% increase (vs 232% in India) from 1995-2009 in households with disposable incomes of $10,001 or more. Consumer spending in Pakistan has increased at a 26 percent average pace the past three years, compared with 7.7 percent for Asia, according to Bloomberg.

Geniuses From Pakistan:

Pakistani-American have been described as "geniuses" by CNN analyst Van Jones. Here's Jones talking about Muslim-Americans and Pakistani-Americans in 2016:

"Honestly, if a Muslim family moved next door to you, you would be the happiest person in the world. First of all, the chances of your kids getting into trouble just went way down. OK, went way down.

Because (American) Muslim community has the lowest crime rate, the highest entrepreneurship, the highest educational attainment for women in the country (US). They are the model American community.

And so, when you have people who are now afraid to come here--that's starting to happen--you have geniuses from Pakistan, who are from Indonesia, who now (think to themselves) "I'm not safe here".

That becomes an economic problem for America long term. So that we're starting to do stuff here that doesn't make good sense for what has made us great so far."

Summary:

Pakistani-Americans are among the top 5 groups in terms of upward economic mobility, according to a study by researchers at Princeton, Stanford and UC Davis. Other immigrant groups with high mobility in America include Chinese and Indians. A 2012 study of 22 nations conducted by Prof Miles Corak for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has found income heritability to be greater in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, China and 5 other countries than in Pakistan.  Pakistani-American have been described as "geniuses" by CNN analyst Van Jones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr5cLv8Dj2I




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