Haq's Musings

Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ

Showing posts with label Pakistanis. Show all posts

Monday, June 8, 2026

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.

Friday, October 13, 2023

US Census Update: Pakistani-Americans' Average Annual Household Earnings Estimated at $150,000

The average annual household earnings of Pakistani-Americans are $149,178, according to the latest update issued by the United States Census Bureau for 2022. The update estimates the median income of 132,958 Pakistani-American households at $106,281. Average is calculated by adding up all incomes and dividing it by total number of households. Median income level divides the top 50% of families from the bottom 50%. It shows that Pakistani-American household incomes are roughly at par with the Asian-American households' median of $104,646 and average of $149,363. The highest income ethnic group in the US are Asian Indian households with a median of $152,341 and average of $197,732. Asians are significantly richer than Whites (mean $78,636, average $112,415) and African Americans (mean $52,238, average $76,888). The word "alone" in the labels in the following table excludes mixed race households.

South Asian Americans Households. Source: US Census Update 2022

Asian Americans are the best educated racial group in the United States. From 2012 to 2022, the percentage of adults age 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or more increased from 34.5% to 41.8% for the non-Hispanic White population; from 21.2% to 27.6% for the Black population; from 51% to 59.3% for the Asian population; and from 14.5% to 20.9% for the Hispanic population, according to the US Census.

Educational Attainment By Racial Groups (Source: US Census)

Among Asian Americans, the Indians (three quarters) have the highest educational attainment with at least a bachelor's degree, followed by Koreans and Pakistanis (about 60%), followed by the rest.

Asian American Educational Achievement by Countries of Origin. Source: US Census

Asians, including Chinese/Taiwanese, Indians and Pakistanis, tend to be concentrated in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Technology) fields where incomes are generally much higher than in other occupations.

As of 2019, there were 35,000 Pakistan-born STEM workers in the United States, according to the American Immigration Council. They included information technologists, software developers, engineers and scientists. These figures do not include medical doctors and healthcare workers.

Foreign-Born STEM Workers in America. Source: American Immigration Council

Foreign-born workers make up a growing share of America's STEM workforce. As of 2019, foreign-born workers made up almost a quarter of all STEM workers in the country. This is a significant increase from 2000, when just 16.4% of the country’s STEM workforce was foreign-born. Between 2000 and 2019, the overall number of STEM workers in the United States increased by 44.5 percent, from 7.5 million to more than 10.8 million, according to American Immigration Council.

India and Pakistan Among Top 10 Countries Receiving US Immigrant Visas. Source: Visual Capitalist

India topped the top 10 list of foreign-born STEM workers with 721,000, followed by China (273,000), Mexico (119,000), Vietnam (100,000), Philippines (87,000), South Korea (64,000), Canada (56,000), Taiwan (53,000), Russia (45,000) and Pakistan (35,000). Enormous number of Indian STEM workers in the United States can at least partly be attributed to the fact that India's "body shops" have mastered the art of gaming the US temporary work visa system. Last year, Indian nationals sponsored by "body shops" like Cognizant, Infosys and TCS received 166,384 H1B visas for work in the United States. By comparison, only 1,107 Pakistanis were granted H1B visas in Fiscal Year 2022. In addition to H1B work visas, 9,300 Indian nationals and 7,200 Pakistani nationals received immigrant visas to settle in the United States as permanent residents in 2021.

Doctor Brain Drain. Source: Statista

In addition to 35,000 Pakistan-born STEM workers, there were 12,454 Pakistan-born and Pakistan-trained medical doctors practicing in the United States, making the South Asian nation the second largest source of medical doctors in America. Pakistan produced 157,102 STEM graduates last year, putting it among the world's top dozen or so countries. About 43,000 of these graduates are in information technology (IT).

H1B Visas Issued in Pakistan. Source: Visagrader.com

H1B Visas Issued in India. Source: Visagrader.com

Every year, applicants sponsored by Indian body shops claim the lion's share of H1B visas. In 2022, Indians received 166,384 new H1B visas, accounting for nearly three quarters of all such visas issued by the US government. The figures reported as India IT exports are in fact the wages earned by millions of Indian H1B workers in the United States.

Many developing countries are experiencing brain drain. But India is losing its best brightest at a much faster rate than others. Some call it "The Great Indian Brain Drain". This is the reason why Indians in the United States are the best educated and the highest earning group. In a recently published book titled "The Other One Percent", authors Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur and Nirvikar Singh explain this phenomenon.

They write that the vast majority of Indians who migrate to the United States are from privileged backgrounds in terms of caste, class and education. They have gone through “a triple selection” process that gave Indian-Americans a boost over typically poor and uneducated immigrants who come to the United States from other countries. The first two selections took place in India. As explained in the book: “The social system created a small pool of persons to receive higher education, who were urban, educated, and from high/dominant castes.” India’s examination system then selected individuals for specialized training in technical fields that also happened to be in demand in the United States. Kapur estimated that the India-American population is nine times more educated than individuals in the home country. Here's an excerpt of it:

"A major focus of this book is on demonstrating and understanding the multiple selections that shaped the Indian-American population. These selections applied not only to education (that, in terms of attaining college degrees, made the India-born population three times more educated than that in the host country and nine times more educated than the home country’s population) but also to class and caste (favoring, by large margins, the “upper” and dominant classes and castes of India), profession (engineering, IT, and health care), and both the region of origin (Gujarati and Punjabi were overrepresented in the first two phases, and Telugu and Tamil in the third phase) and region of settlement (in specific metropolitan clusters in and around New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Houston and Dallas). In addition to direct selection is what we call the “selection+” advantage: we suggest that group characteristics or norms, such as the fact that Indians had the highest propensity to live in married-couple households of any major immigrant group, added to the advantages of being an already selected group. We show, in particular, how family norms were useful in keeping the Indian-American poverty level low (under 5 percent) and family income high (the highest in the United States). It is also likely that the selection process enabled, without explicitly intending to, the generation of high levels of social capital (through linguistic/ professional networks such as Gujarati entrepreneurs in the hotel industry, Telugu and Tamil workers in the IT industry, IIT engineers, Malayali nurses, Bengali academics, etc.)"

Friday, August 24, 2018

Riaz Haq on Silicon Valley Pakistanis, Pakistan's Human Capital and Water Crisis

The scribe was interviewed live on Facebook for Day Dreamers Show by its host Dr. Aijaz Qureshi Canadawalla on August 24, 2018. The discussion began with introductions. It focused on the following topics:

Riaz Haq

1. Riaz Haq's background, education and 37 years experience in Silicon Valley: Graduated with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Karachi's NED University in 1974. Completed Master's degree in EE from New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1981. Worked at Intel Corporation for 15 years and led microprocessor design teams. Recognized by PC Magazine as Person of the Year for contribution to Intel 80386 processor. Started two high tech companies.

2. Silicon Valley Pakistanis: Over 50,000 Pakistanis in Silicon Valley. Many successful tech entrepreneurs. Some have taken companies public while others have sold companies to big tech giants like Cisco and Intel. Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs in active in Silicon Valley and holds a large annual conference in the valley every year. It is attended by technologists, entrepreneurs, executives, venture capitalists, lawyers and accountants making up the local tech startup ecosystem.

3. Pakistan's Human Capital: Pakistan's biggest natural resource is its young population. It can and should be developed into valuable human capital that will take Pakistan to the next level. It requires basic and higher education as well as skills training for the 21st century workforce.

4. Pakistan Water Crisis: The 150 million acre feet of water that flows annually through Pakistan's river and irrigation system is a critical resource. How can this precious resource be conserved, stored and used effectively for the benefit of its people?

Here's the recorded video of Facebook live interview:

https://youtu.be/n2_Uuak6SGY

Here's an Urdu newspaper written by Amar Chaudhry who apparently watch this show:

Aik Darkwast by Ammar Chaudhry. Source: Awaz Today

Minorities Are Majority in Silicon Valley

Sunday, February 12, 2017

A Conversation with White Nationalist Jared Taylor on Race in America

Is there an established link between race and intelligence? Are whites inherently more intelligent than people of color? If so, why did Europe suffer a rapid decline during the Dark Ages after the Fall of the Roman Empire? Did the Europeans' intelligence (IQ) precipitously drop? Or did the IQ of the Arab-Persian Muslims experience a meteoric rise during the Golden Age of Islam while Europe was in the Dark Ages?

World IQ Scores Map Source: American Info Maps

Where did the term "Caucasian" to describe Europeans come from? Does it suggest that Europeans originally migrated from Caucasus region in Central Asia? Didn't most Pakistanis and North Indians also come from the same Caucasus region to their new home in South Asia? If so, why is the IQ for Europeans (100) higher than the IQ of 82 for Indians and 84 for Pakistanis? Is it dealing with the harsh winters than has increased European IQ? If so, why do the Eskimos have lower IQs than the Europeans?

Is race a biological or a social/cultural construct in America? Does the one-drop (of blood) rule suggest it's more cultural than biological? Why is a person with even a single drop of African blood considered Black even if he/she looks and acts white in every way?

Why is the fertility rate (TFR) among whites declining rapidly below replacement levels? Is it because the whites are feeling threatened by immigrants of color and not wanting to bring white children into the world? Or is it part of the worldwide declining trend that has cut Japan's TFR to 1.44? With total fertility rate of less than 2 children per American woman and declining, how long can the United States continue to maintain its primacy as an economic, political and military superpower? With the aging population and workers per retiree down to 2.9 already, how will the US government continue to honor its commitments of social security benefits to the elderly? Would liberal immigration from non-white countries help resolve these issues?

Is immigration good or bad for America? Are non-white immigrants helping or hurting America? Are non-white immigrants a threat to White America? Why is California with its 40% white population doing so much better than France with its 80% white population? Why does California with a population of 38 million have slightly bigger economy than France with its 68 million population? If you claim America is only for white Europeans, how would you react to the native Americans claim that America is only for them?

Viewpoint From Overseas panelists Ali H. Cemendtaur and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com) discuss these questions with Jared Taylor, White Nationalist founder and editor of American Renaissance.

https://youtu.be/Z61ReQvXWGM

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Are People of Color Less Intelligent?

Golden Age of Islam

Harvard Genetics Study of South Asians

Pakistan Population Growth: Blessing or Curse?

Massive Support For Muslims in Silicon Valley After Trump Ban

Minorities Are Majority in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Pakistanis

Rise of the West After Industrial Revolution

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Early Anthrax Probe of Pakistani-Americans

Dr. Bruce Ivins, a US Army scientist, committed suicide as federal prosecutors prepared an indictment alleging he mailed anthrax-laced letters in 2001 in what authorities said Friday may have been a bizarre attempt to test a vaccine for the deadly poison. Listed as co-inventor of the anthrax vaccine that VaxGen planned to market, the scientist worked at the Army's biodefense labs at Ft. Detrick, Md., for 18 years until his death on Tuesday. While financial gain from the vaccine may have been a motive, the media reports indicate he had a long history of homicidal threats.

Five people died and 17 others became ill when anthrax-laced letters began arriving at congressional offices, newsrooms and post offices soon after Sept. 11, 2001.

"As far back as the year 2000, the respondent (Ivins) has actually attempted to murder several other people, either through poisoning. He is a revenge killer. When he feels that he's been slighted or has had -- especially toward women -- he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings," Jean Duley, Ivins's therapist, said.

She added that Ivins "has been forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic, homicidal killer. I have that in evidence. And through my working with him, I also believe that to be very true."

Prior to Ivins, the focus of the investigation was on Dr. Steven Hatfill, American physician, virologist and bio-weapons expert, and several Pakistani-American city employees in Chester, PA.

After wrongly suspecting and investigating Pakistani-Americans and Army scientist Hatfill, the FBI more than a year ago began looking at Ivins, who worked at the same military lab as Dr. Hatfill. Ivins, a decorated scientist who was working on an anthrax cure, killed himself last Tuesday.

Dr. Hatfill was cleared some time ago and he successfully sued the US government for defamation and settled out of court for $5.8m.

Dr. Irshad Shaikh, a Pakistani-American city health commissioner in Chester, PA, reported in November 2001 that the FBI agents broke down his door and entered his house with guns drawn, followed by members of a hazardous materials team in moon suits and gas masks. Dr. Shaikh, 39, who was trained as a radiologist in Pakistan and holds master's and doctoral degrees from Johns Hopkins University was subjected to several hours of questioning along with his brother, Dr. Masood Shaikh, the manager of the city's program to reduce lead hazards for children.

"The F.B.I. can search my house any time," Dr. Irshad Shaikh said in an interview at City Hall with his brother after the FBI raid and questioning. The two are both legal immigrants and are eager to become citizens.

Dr. Masood Shaikh, 40, who was trained as a psychiatrist in Pakistan and holds a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins, is so eager to accommodate the F.B.I. that he offered to turn over his passport, said the brothers' lawyer, Anthony F. List, who was present for the interview.

Later, FBI agents subjected the wife of another Pakistani-American, Asif Kazi, to the same treatment. Days after the raid, Mr. Kazi, a city accountant who was born in Pakistan and is now an American citizen, told the media, "I'm still in trauma," he said. "I cannot sleep properly. I cannot eat. You are worried of the fear of the unknown. What's going to happen tomorrow?"

Years after the raid at the brothers' home and at the home of their friend the F.B.I. has charged none of the men. Nor has it provided any detail on what led to the raid, other than to say agents were acting on credible information that they had spent more than two weeks checking out.

But here are some possible reasons why FBI targeted them:

1. The FBI was influenced by the US media hype about Muslim Pakistan as the source of all terrorism, regardless of the Pakistanis' ability to access the Texan strain of anthrax used in the attacks.
2. The FBI found Cipro, an antibiotic often used in anthrax treatment, at the home of Asif Kazi. Cipro is not specific to anthrax. It is a powerful antibiotic that is used to treat many ailments.
3. The FBI agents fell victim to general Islamophobia and xenophobia in the United States which resulted in widespread abuses by the US law enforcement against people with Muslim names or of foreign birth. Post-911, many immigrants of Muslim faith were jailed or deported. A large number left voluntarily.
4. The FBI investigators were misled by Ivins's anonymous letter, included in the anthrax envelopes, that said "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" and assumed the source to be Muslim.

Former Senator Daschle, one of the targets of anthrax attacks, summed up his criticism of the FBI investigation by saying, "From the very beginning I've had real concerns about the quality of the investigation." Daschle further said in a broadcast interview, "Given the fact that they already paid somebody else $5 million for the mistakes they must have made gives you some indication of the overall caliber and quality of the investigation."

While the FBI has apologized and handsomely compensated Dr. Hatfill, there has not even been so much as an apology offered to the Pakistani-American victims of the FBI indiscretion. It is understandable that the FBI may have made mistakes in its zeal to investigate Pakistanis under severe pressure, but it is hard to accept why they have treated Pakistani-American targets differently in its aftermath. The FBI needs to make amends by treating their Pakistani-American targets the same way as they treated Dr. Hatfill.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Silicon Valley Pakistanis Hit By High Food Prices

The prices of rice, chappati, besan, daals, spices and almost all staples consumed by silicon valley South Asians have experienced triple digit price inflation during the last year. After reading about food price inflation and shortages of staple foods in their home countries, Pakistanis and Indians are now feeling the pinch in Silicon Valley as Basmati rice is in very short supply even with a 300% price jump. Jamsine rice, preferred by East Asians, has also disappeared from the grocery shelves at Costco stores. Costco management has decided to limit each customer to two bags of rice to control panic buying or profiteering.

Even with these dramatic price increases, the impact on their wallets from food price inflation is relatively small because Silicon Valley South Asians spend a much smaller percentage of their incomes on food than their friends and families in South Asia. Nonetheless, higher energy costs and the costs of various goods and services used by them everyday is causing them to be careful with their monthly budgets.

Many governments, including Pakistan's and India's, realize the possibility of civil unrest in the event of severe food shortages or famine, and some have taken minimal steps to ease the crisis in the short term, such as reducing import tariffs and putting export restrictions. On December 20, China did away with food export rebates in an effort to prevent domestic shortages. Russia, Kazakhstan, and Argentina have also implemented export controls.

According to reports from London this week, the executive director of the World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, warned that more than 100 million people will be pushed into poverty by a "silent tsunami" of sharply rising food prices. "This is the new face of hunger - the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," Sheeran said. "The world's misery index is rising."

The Bush administration, after sitting on the sidelines for months, is finally taking notice of the situation. The Washington Post reported today that the administration and Congress have been caught flat-footed by rapidly escalating global food prices and are scrambling to respond to a crisis that they increasingly view as a threat to U.S. national security, according to government officials, congressional staffers and human rights experts.

Among the major international concerns about "instability" leading to increased threats of "terrorism", the food price inflation and shortages of staples have now risen near the top. However, the $200m allocation by the US is much too small to deal with the global nature of this crisis. The Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the administration is planning “further steps to help ease the burden of rising food prices on the world’s neediest people.” Options include building more overseas storage facilities and roads to reduce food spoiling, and making the food crisis a top priority for the G-8 summit of industrialized nations in July, administration officials said. Top Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are pressing the White House to devote more money to emergency food aid — up from $350 million to $550 million — as part of a supplemental Iraq war budget package.

The consensus seems to be emerging in Washington that these are just the first steps toward a bigger commitment with a comprehensive strategy to follow soon.