Brain Drain vs. Brain Gain: How the Diaspora Is Quietly Reshaping Local Tech Ten Pakistani-founded companies now sit among America's billion-dollar startups, and a growing number of the people behind them never fully left — they invest, mentor, and increasingly build back into Pakistan even while building somewhere else. The story was never just "brain drain." It was always brain drain and brain gain happening at the same time, and the second half is finally becoming visible.

Abstract

In June 2026, the National Foundation for American Policy published a study that quietly rewrote part of the brain-drain narrative Pakistani tech media has repeated for years. Analysing more than 700 US startups valued at a billion dollars or more, it found ten with a Pakistani founder or co-founder — placing Pakistan alongside China, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the global rankings of immigrant entrepreneurship, behind only India's 96 and Israel's 60. Sualeh Asif, born in Karachi, co-founded the AI coding startup Cursor. Qasar Younis, born in Lala Moosa and later chief operating officer at Y Combinator, now runs the $15 billion autonomous-vehicle software company Applied Intuition. Rehan Jalil, a NED University alumnus, built a data privacy platform that Veeam acquired for $1.725 billion.