65% Of Top AI Companies Have Immigrant Founders

New research shows immigrants fuel artificial intelligence in America by founding many of the country’s top AI companies. Analysts say welcoming immigration policies would advance U.S. leadership in AI and other technology fields. “Immigrants have founded or cofounded nearly two-thirds (65% or 28 of 43) of the top AI companies in the United States,” according to a new National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis. “Seventy-seven percent of the leading U.S.-based AI companies were founded or cofounded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.” The research, which I authored, was conducted through interviews and gathering information on the 43 U.S. companies on Forbes AI 50, a list of the top startup companies “developing the most promising business applications of artificial intelligence—companies with compelling visions and the resources and technical wherewithal to achieve them.” A July 2022 NFAP study found immigrant entrepreneurs started more than half of U.S. billion-dollar companies and included several AI companies. PROMOTED “Large language models and other forms of generative AI are still at an early stage, making it difficult to predict with great confidence the exact productivity effects they will have,” according to Martin Neil Baily, Erik Brynjolfsson and Anton Korinek in a Brookings Institution report, though they believe the impact will be quite positive. The AI-focused businesses founded by immigrants involve a variety of products and services. Pachama uses AI and satellite data to estimate carbon stored in forests. Immigrants Diego Saez Gil and Tomas Aftalion, born in Argentina, founded the company in 2018. Databricks provides analytics and data storage and has 5,000 employees. The company has three U.S.-born founders and immigrant founders from Iran (Ali Ghodsi and Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji), Romania (Ion Stoica and Matei Zaharia) and China (Reynold Xin). Ashutosh Garg, born in India, has accomplished a rare feat among entrepreneur—founding two companies valued at over $1 billion, Eightfold.ai and Bloomreach. Eightfold.ai, a talent management and acquisition platform, has 500 employees. Garg cofounded Eightfold.ai with fellow Indian immigrant Varun Kacholia. Other top immigrant-founded AI companies use artificial intelligence for sales (Clari), farming (FarmWorks), construction (Canvas), drug discovery (Insitro) and medical diagnostics (Viz.ai). Baily, Brynjolfsson and Korinek write, “We expect that generative AI will have tremendous positive productivity effects, both by increasing the level of productivity and accelerating future productivity growth.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.