While controversy around US immigrants reigns, a new study reveals that more than half of the $1-billion start-ups – or “unicorns” – established in the last few years were started by immigrants. Possible the best-known of these, Elon Musk, was born in South Africa.
The National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) reveals in a policy brief that immigrants founded 50 of 91 (55%) of America’s start-up companies valued at $1-billion or more, and are key members of management or product development teams in more than 80% of these companies.
It adds that at least nine highly successful immigrant-founded billion-dollar companies were recently acquired or went public and were therefore not included in the study.
It was found that several of the immigrant entrepreneurs featured in the research have also started more than one company – Elon Musk being a case in point, having started both SpaceX and Tesla.
The research finds that, among these privately held billion-dollar startup companies, immigrant founders have created an average of more than 1 200 jobs per company.
And the collective value of the 50 immigrant-founded companies is $248-billon, which is more than the value of all the companies listed on the stock market of many countries.
The research shows that the billion-dollar companies with at least one immigrant founder with the highest valuations are Uber ($72-billion), SpaceX ($21-billion), WeWork ($20,2-billion), Palantir Technologies ($20-billion), Stripe ($20-billion), Slack ($7,1-billion), Moderna Therapeutics ($7-billion), Robinhood ($5,6-billion), Wish ($4,3-billion), Instacart ($4,2-billion), Houzz ($4-billion), Credit Karma ($3,5-billion), Tanium ($3,5-billion), Zoox ($3,2-billion) and CrowdStrike ($3-billion).
Immigrant entrepreneurs in billion-dollar startups come from diverse backgrounds, from a total of 25 different countries, according to the document.