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To answer that question, Crunchbase took a look at founders and CEOs across several groupings of startup unicorns. The research included the most heavily funded private companies, newly minted unicorns and companies that recently crossed the $5 billion valuation mark.

The short answer? Yes, immigrants are still heavily represented in the ranks of U.S. unicorn founders and CEOs. They hail from multiple continents, and are leading companies in sectors from e-commerce to crypto to pharmaceuticals.

The long answer? Yes, but maybe less so. Early data indicates the proportion of high-valuation U.S. startups founded or led by immigrants may be trending down some. One factor is the growth of startup hubs outside the U.S., making it easier for founders to launch companies in their home country. The other, most notorious factor: the hurdles of securing a visa as a would-be startup founder.

“There is no visa specifically for someone who wants to start a company,” according to , founding partner at , a Silicon Valley-based firm that invests in U.S. startups with immigrant founders.

While U.S. student enrollment of foreign nationals roughly doubled from 2007 to 2018, there hasn’t been a corresponding strategy to speed or simplify graduates’ pursuit of a green card, Mehta said. And although that issue predates Trump’s election, the current administration hasn’t helped, deciding not to implement an Obama-era .

Still, a striking percentage of funded private companies that crossed the $1 billion valuation threshold this past year are immigrant founded. Below, we take a look at 19 such companies, along with a look founders’ countries of origin.

We also look at the most heavily funded, highest-valuation private companies overall with immigrant founders and CEOs.

The big picture

If investors are backing fewer immigrant-led U.S. startups, it may be because there are fewer available to back. For the 2018-19 period, U.S. immigration declined to 595,000 people—the lowest level since the 1980s, according to one oft-cited . It’s a level that leaves even some members of the Trump administration’s inner circle concerned that immigration levels are to support economic growth.

Of course, one needn’t be a new immigrant to launch a high-flying startup. Many of the successful founders on our lists above immigrated years or decades before their companies took flight. The lists, overall, include immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children as well as those who came later, commonly to attend universities.

Lastly, we should keep in mind that immigration, like unicorns, venture funding and startup valuations, has historically been rather cyclical. The issues confronting immigrant founders today may very well fade away or morph into something completely different in coming years.

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led the round, which saw participation from and Softbank Investment Advisers (the , more or less). The investment follows that Automation Anywhere raised in November of 2018, a round led by the Vision Fund. Automation Anywhere was worth a more modest $2.6 billion (post-money) after its Series A, meaning that its new valuation ascribes billions of new dollars of value to the company after just one more year in operation.1

That valuation growth works out to about $350 million per month since its November Series A. It’s worth recalling that Automation Anywhere’s Series A came in two parts, completed in July of 2018. Between its first and second Series A checks and its new capital, the company has now raised around $840 million in under 1.5 years.

What for, is a fair question. Simply put RPA involves taking rote, or routine tasks that humans normally perform, and then deploying software to execute the effort instead. When we discuss automation, media worries tend to fixate on labor that IRL workers perform; you might consider RPA to be the white-collar equivalent, to some degree.

Automation Anywhere competitor as “the technology that allows anyone today to configure computer software, or a ‘robot’ to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business process.” UiPath has raised around $1 billion for its RPA work, including money from and in April of this year led by .

RPA is a hot space for private investors.

While it’s fun to note that UiPath and Automation Anywhere will now face-off with nearly $2 billion invested between them, it’s worth considering what the Automation deal means for . The new round pushes the value of the SoftBank investment much higher. That sort of markup could help the Japanese conglomerate raise, and launch its second Vision Fund. Perhaps the new Automation Anywhere round will begin to paper over the WeWork mess.

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led the round, which also included participation from a host of other investors including , , , and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, CapitalG, , IVP and Madrona Venture Group.

The Series D brings New York-based UiPath’s total raised since its $30 million almost exactly two years ago to around . (The company was founded in 2005 but didn’t raise its seed round until 2015, according to its Crunchbase .) UiPath also claims the round now makes it one of the world’s most valuable AI companies. It pointed out that China’s SenseTime was valued at $4.5 billion after closing a $620 million round last May.

In its own words, UiPath uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in an effort to “automate millions of repetitive, mind-numbing tasks for business and government organizations all over the world, improving productivity, customer experience and employee job satisfaction.”

The company has 400,000 users in 200 countries and is also refreshingly transparent about its financials, noting that it increased its annual recurring revenue (ARR) from $8 million in April 2017 to over $200 million now. Also, UiPath said it grew its headcount by 16 times over the past two years – to more than 2,500 employees today.

UiPath had just raised a Series C in November, when its ARR was $150 million. So why another raise so soon? The company, in its , said: “Our business growth has largely funded our operations. Looking forward, we still have aggressive plans that we believe can be best executed with additional funding, while ensuring our commitment to customer success during this unprecedented growth.” Specifically, UiPath plans to “deepen” its investments in workforce education, accelerate its R&D and strategic product roadmap and invest in “strategic M&A.”

UiPath co-founder and CEO said in the company’s that the industry is “at the tipping point.”

“Business leaders everywhere are augmenting their workforces with software robots, rapidly accelerating the digital transformation of their entire business and freeing employees to spend time on more impactful work,” he added, noting that it’s his company’s vision to have “a robot helping every person.”

The company also hinted that an IPO might be in its future, saying: “We are practicing what it takes to be a public company today, including implementing public company caliber financial accounting, processes and controls and building the industry’s strongest management team that includes executives from HP, Microsoft, NetApp, Nutanix, and SAP.”

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