AI is projected to add over $15 trillion to the global economy by 2030, with the U.S. leading the way through innovation, investment, and concentration of talent. At the heart of this growth is human capital—visionary founders and skilled professionals driving industry-defining breakthroughs.
Dreem has reviewed the top 100 privately held U.S. AI companies with the highest total funding to understand who is building the future of AI in America.
“Immigrant founders fuel America’s AI dominance, raising 2.5 times more funding than U.S.-born founders, driving innovation, and creating jobs that power our economy. However, Trump’s immigration policies, particularly the restrictive country caps, severely limit the influx of global AI talent. These arbitrary quotas stifle progress and risk a brain drain, pushing visionaries to countries with less restrictive systems. The U.S. must abolish country caps and streamline skilled immigration to secure its AI leadership, or lose out on the next wave of breakthroughs,”– Dmitri Litvinov, CEO & Co-Founder of Dreem.
Here’s what the data shows:
62% of the top privately held U.S. AI companies have at least one founder born outside the United States. Only 38% of these companies were founded exclusively by U.S.-born individuals.
Companies with immigrant founders make up the majority of the top 100 U.S. AI startups, highlighting the critical role of global founder mobility in driving U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence.
The diversity of founder origins shows that U.S. leadership in AI is deeply reliant on international talent pipelines.
In total, 35 non-U.S. countries are represented among the founders of the top 100 privately held U.S. AI companies, highlighting the global nature of innovation in the AI sector.
India leads with 23 founders, including Raj Neervannan from AlphaSense, Aravind Srinivas from Perplexity AI, and Preet Virk from Celestial AI.
Israel follows with 14 founders, including Yossi Naar from Cybereason, Renen Hallak from Vectra AI, and Yotam Segev from Cyera.
China is next with 9 founders, including Ivan Zhao from Notion, Ce Zhang from Together AI, and Jiajun Zhu from Nuro.
Together, these three countries account for over 44% of all non–U.S.-born founders of top AI startups, highlighting their strong entrepreneurial contributions to the global tech and AI ecosystem.
| Company | Funding (million) |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | $61.9B |
| Anthropic | $20.7B |
| Databricks | $19.2B |
| xAI | $16.0B |
| Waymo | $15.4B |
| Aurora | $4.2B |
| Safe Superintelligence | $3.0B |
| Nuro | $2.2B |
| Inflection | $1.5B |
| AlphaSense | $1.4B |
California (66%) is the state where the majority of AI companies were founded. It remains the epicenter of AI innovation, attracting the majority of founders.
New York (15%) and Texas (4%) follow as leading states offering AI hubs. San Francisco is the top city, home to 26% of companies. Other hotspots include Mountain View, Palo Alto, and New York City.
Immigrant founders help drive AI growth across multiple U.S. states, not just Silicon Valley. This includes Pennsylvania, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, and other states.
A few years ago, the tech industry was buzzing about startups moving from San Francisco to cities like Austin, Miami, and Seattle. However, the rise of AI has shifted the tide, reestablishing San Francisco as the epicenter of tech innovation.
Companies founded by immigrants create jobs in the U.S. far more actively than companies founded by U.S.-born entrepreneurs, fueling economic growth and innovation. However, the U.S. immigration system is a bottleneck, with visa delays and quotas limiting access to global AI talent. This threatens U.S. leadership in AI, as competitors are able to move faster.
Countries like Canada, the UK, and the UAE offer fast-track visas and startup-friendly policies, drawing AI talent away from the U.S.
Restrictive policies may push talent and investment abroad, potentially leading to the next major AI breakthroughs occurring outside the U.S.
AI’s success relies on skilled professionals. Limited visa pathways increase dependence on automation to fill talent gaps, potentially stifling human-driven innovation.
Maksim Tsygankov, founder of EasyVision, came to the U.S. on an O-1 visa:
“While I started out like many others, during my O-1 visa application, I had to present strong evidence of my AI expertise and past accomplishments. My core AI expertise was built before I immigrated, and after moving to the US, I focused mostly on developing my skills in sales and adapting my technical knowledge to the U.S. market,” – Maksim Tsygankov, Founder of EasyVision.
Why This Matters:
Aravind Srinivas, the Indian-origin founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, has been vocal about the challenges and inefficiencies of the U.S. immigration system, particularly regarding skilled immigrants and green card wait times.
Aravind Srinivas has publicly shared that he has been waiting for his U.S. green card for over three years, despite being the CEO of a $9 billion AI company and employing over 100 people in the U.S. Srinivas’s case has become a symbol of the broader challenges faced by highly skilled immigrants,mainlyy from India, who face extremely long wait times due to country caps and bureaucratic delays.
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