{"id":201,"date":"2026-08-11T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gojumpstart.com\/blog\/immigrants-central-us-innovation"},"modified":"2026-08-11T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T10:00:00","slug":"immigrants-central-us-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gojumpstart.com\/blog\/immigrants-central-us-innovation","title":{"rendered":"Immigrants remain central to US innovation, despite the harder rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fabiano Rocha<\/strong>, founder and CEO of Jumpstart, interviewed on Pr\u00e9-Market<\/strong> at Times Brasil<\/strong> \u2014 CNBC’s exclusive licensee \u00b7 By Lara Madeira \u00b7 August 11, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The economic weight of foreign talent helps explain why the United States keeps attracting professionals and founders even as the political conversation about immigration hardens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half the next unicorns have an immigrant founder<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Immigrants are behind nearly half of the US startups with the strongest potential to reach unicorn status in 2026, and account for 59% of those companies’ valuation<\/strong>. Demand for foreign professionals creates a dynamic that does not necessarily track the political debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States broadly needs immigrants \u2014 skilled and unskilled \u2014 across different fronts. And that financial motivation speaks far louder than any political order.<\/p>Fabiano Rocha, founder and CEO of Jumpstart<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In AI the presence is even stronger<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Among the nine companies leading the development of AI models, six have immigrant founders<\/strong> \u2014 OpenAI and Anthropic among them. Among the sector’s emerging startups the proportion is higher still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you look at the six new startups leading AI models, every one of them has immigrant founders.<\/p>Fabiano Rocha<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The route changes, not the destination<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Shifts in the political environment can temporarily reduce the number of people looking to move, but they do not remove the economic pull. Access to capital, to investors and to markets still weighs on a founder’s decision to set up in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite all the noise in the administration, the businessperson, the startup founder, still goes \u2014 because the financial motivation is also very strong.<\/p>Fabiano Rocha<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What tends to change is the route: founders shift toward other visa or green card categories depending on the conditions and approval rates available. And the competition has grown \u2014 Europe, Canada, Australia and China are chasing the same people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is worth remembering that only a share of international students manages to stay in the United States after graduation and professional training programmes \u2014 a funnel that ends up concentrating highly qualified profiles in technology, innovation and new business creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Read the full article (in Portuguese) at Times Brasil \u2014 CNBC’s exclusive licensee<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fabiano Rocha on Times Brasil (CNBC): immigrants are behind nearly half of the US startups most likely to reach unicorn status in 2026 and hold 59% of their valuation \u2014 and six of the nine leading AI model companies have immigrant founders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-na-midia"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/times-hero-600x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/times-hero-600x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Jumpstart Team","author_link":"https:\/\/www.gojumpstart.com\/blog\/author\/aga-publisher"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agaproxy.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}