14+ Unicorns by founders/co-founders of Pakistani origin contributing to the US & Middle Eastern Economy!

There’s a certain infographic doing rounds on social media that shows the top contributors to the US economy by Unicorn founders and their respective countries. As is natural, when I first came across this post my eyes went searching for a green flag because even at any given moment I can count at least 5 founders whose startups hit unicorn status and who were or are originally from Pakistan. Sadly, the post had no mention of Pakistan at all.

This may or may not be coming from a place of patriotism but more importantly, it pains me to see an entire community with so much potential getting left out due to either a lack of research or just plain ignorance. Careem for example, though not originally a US-based startup, got acquired by Uber and has been since contributing to the US economy in one way or the other. So I gathered my team (yes, I am this extra) and compiled a list of 14 startups in the last 15–20 years that have reached unicorn status at least once and were co-founded by Pakistani founders.

Before I mention the list, this is probably just the surface that we have managed to scratch in a few hours so please feel free to reach out if you know someone who deserves to be on this list.

1. Cresta AI

Co-founded by Zayd Enam, Cresta AI was valued at $1.6 billion in 2022, They are helping sales and service agents improve customer service by leveraging the power of AI. They were also named one of the most promising artificial intelligence companies by Forbes in 2020.

2. Afiniti

Afiniti hit unicorn status in 2017 being valued at $1.6 billion. Founded by Zia Chisti, Afiniti is developing AI specifically for call centers. Their technology focuses on identifying patterns in conversations and using AI and Machine learning to optimize pairings for better outcomes

3. FireEye (now Trellix)

Founder Ashar Aziz created FireEye as a virtual machine introspection tool to assist users in safeguarding their networks from viruses that would have otherwise gotten past conventional signature-based protections. It hit unicorn status in 2004 with a market cap of $3.2 billion.

4. Cavium (Bought by Marvel)

Cavium was co-founded in 2000 by Raghib Hussain and offers integrated semiconductor processors for networking, communications, storage, wireless, security, video, and linked home and office applications. It was acquired by Marvel in 2018 with their market cap increasing to $5.032 billion between 2009 and 2018.

5. Cart.com

Cart.com helps and empowers brands to scale by providing them with tools and a seamless data-rich approach to allow them to reach more customers and build better brands. It was co-founded by Omair Tariq in 2020 and had to date raised $383 million in funding.

6. Chegg

Chegg was co-founded by Osman Rashid in 2005 and is valued at $2 billion as of 2022. They are an education technology company focused on textbook solutions and providing other tutoring and student support services.

7. Motive

Motive is focused on businesses that power the physical economy. They are working on technologies that help these businesses be more secure and profitable. Motive was co-founded by Shoaib Makani in 2013 and is a unicorn that was valued at $1.4 billion in 2019.

8. Mercury

Simply put, Mercury is the bank for startups. They provide virtual and physical debit cards and custom-made tools to help startups scale, currency exchange, etc. It was co-founded by Immad Akhund in 2017. Mercury was valued at $1.62 billion in 2021.

9. Temporal

Temporal technologies was founded in 2019 and one of the co-founders in Samar Abbas. They have created an open-source microservices orchestration platform for building and running resilient applications. They hit unicorn status in 2022 with a $1.5 billion valuation.

10. Applied Intuition

Co-founded by Qasar Younis in 2017, Applied Intuition reached a valuation of $1.25 billion in 2020 for its Autonomous vehicle testing software. They specialize in software infrastructure that powers autonomous vehicles and driver assistance systems.

11. Stacks

Muneeb Ali is the co-founder of Stacks, a platform for open-source Bitcoin smart contracts. A startup developing the Stacks technology called Blockstack PBC raised over $75 million through a combination of venture money and token sales.

12. Aligntech

Another startup co-founded by Zia Chisti is Aligntech which focuses on manufacturing 3D digital scanners and Invisalign used in orthodontics.

13. Careem

Careem was acquired by Uber for a whopping $3.1 billion in 2019. The co-founder, Mudassar Sheikha is originally from Karachi Pakistan.

14. Sonus

Hassan Ahmed created Sonus Networks in 1996. Sonus Networks went public in May 2000 and had its peak market value of $15.4 billion in July 2000. Ahmed departed Sonus in 2008 when it had a value of $430 million.

15. Zameen.com

According to data from Forbes as of December 2021, Emerging Markets Property Group, the parent company of Zameen.com, was valued at more than $1 billion. As a result, after Afiniti and KeepTruckin, the combined company became the third unicorn founded by Pakistani entrepreneurs.