Immigrant founders are the norm in key U.S. AI firms: study
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
More than half of the top privately held AI companies based in the U.S. have at least one immigrant founder, according to an analysis from the Institute for Progress shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: The Trump administration is hammering out its AI policies against the backdrop of intensifying global competition and its own "America first" program and strict border policies.
Zoom in: The IFP analysis of the top AI-related startups in the Forbes AI 2025 list found that 25 — or 60% — of the 42 companies based in the U.S. were founded or co-founded by immigrants.
- The founders of those companies "hail from 25 countries, with India leading (nine founders), followed by China (eight founders) and then France (three founders). Australia, the U.K., Canada, Israel, Romania, and Chile all have two founders each."
- Among them is OpenAI — whose co-founders include Elon Musk, born in South Africa, and Ilya Sutskever, born in Russia — and Databricks, whose co-founders were born in Iran, Romania and China.
- The analysis echoes previous findings about the key role foreign-born scientists and engineers have played in the U.S. tech industry and the broader economy.
What they're saying: "A critical part of the historic story about U.S. AI leadership, and technological leadership in general, is that we're able to draw on the best and brightest from around the world," says Jeremy Neufeld, director of immigration policy at IFP and an author of the new analysis.
- "If we're going toe-to-toe in a competition with China, they have a much bigger population than we do. They graduate far more STEM grads these days than we do."
- Neufeld says the U.S. ability to recruit and retain high-skilled workers faces "two major headwinds": The U.K., Canada, China and other countries are more aggressively recruiting top talent, and the U.S. has created barriers to immigration, particularly the growing wait times for green cards.
Flashback: A debate over foreign workers erupted among President Trump's supporters late last year, with Musk and others speaking out in support of H-1B visas for high-skilled workers in "specialty occupations."
- Other Trump supporters argue the U.S. should focus on training U.S. workers and prioritize their development over foreign workers.
- Last year, the National Science Board, which advises the White House and Congress on science and engineering research and education policy, called for the U.S. to invest more heavily in training domestic STEM workers, while emphasizing that "foreign-born talent has been, and remains, key to U.S. strength in STEM."
What we're watching: Trump signed an executive order in his first days in office directing his administration to develop an AI "action plan" to "sustain and enhance America's global AI dominance." The plan is due this summer.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to indicate that Ilya Sutskever was born in Russia (not Canada).
