Billion-Dollar Startups Founded by Poles in the US [REPORT]

The NFAP has been examining the impact of immigrants on the American economy for nearly two decades. Since 2016, it has been closely monitoring immigrant-founded "unicorns" - privately held startups valued at one billion dollars or more that have raised at least one round of funding from venture capital investors.

Poles and Billion-Dollar Companies

In both the 2016 and 2018 NFAP datasets, there were no Poles to be found. Four years ago, six individuals were listed among the Polish founders of billion-dollar companies.

This year (in the report published in June), that number rose to nine.

The group of Polish "unicorn" co-founders includes:

• Wojciech Zaremba (OpenAI) – company valuation: $852 billion
• Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski (ElevenLabs) – valuation: $11 billion
• Karol Hausman (Physical Intelligence) – valuation: $11 billion
• Filip Kaliszan (Verkada) – valuation: $5.8 billion
• Paweł Garbacki (Fireworks AI) – valuation: $4 billion (*in July 2026, the company's valuation reached $17.5 billion)
• Kamil Bajda-Pawlikowski (Starburst) – valuation: $3.35 billion
• Tomasz Górny (Nextiva) – valuation: $2.7 billion
• Joanna Kochaniak (Upside) – valuation: $1.5 billion

AI and Much More: Fireworks AI, Physical Intelligence, and Others

Of this list, the most globally recognizable figure is Wojciech Zaremba, whose OpenAI created the widely used ChatGPT. The most publicly active founder remains Mati Staniszewski, who co-founded ElevenLabs alongside Piotr Dąbkowski - a company emerging as a global leader in combining voice technology and artificial intelligence. It is worth noting that Staniszewski serves on advisory councils for both the President and the Prime Minister of Poland.

The remaining Polish founders of billion-dollar startups may be less recognized in their country of birth, but within their respective fields, they represent the absolute top tier globally.

Let's take a look:

• The Fireworks AI platform enables the building, fine-tuning, and scaling of AI based on open models. Just in July of this year, it raised $1.5 billion at a valuation of $17.5 billion! Paweł Garbacki is a co-founder of Fireworks AI, with Nvidia listed among its top investors.
• Physical Intelligence brings AI into the physical world. Co-founded by Karol Hausman, the startup develops foundation models and learning algorithms to power today's robots and tomorrow's hardware devices.
• Verkada - founded by Filip Kaliszan - is a security system that integrates surveillance cameras, access control, and smart building solutions, all managed through the cloud.
• Starburst is an advanced platform that connects data regardless of whether it resides in the cloud, on-premise environments, or hybrid systems. Kamil Bajda-Pawlikowski is a co-founder, but other Poles also play essential roles in the team, including Grzegorz Kokosiński (Senior Manager, Engineering), Łukasz Osipiuk (Senior Staff Software Engineer), and Piotr Findeisen (Distinguished Engineer).
• I have previously covered Nextiva, co-founded by Tomasz Górny (written as Tomas Gorny in the US), on Polish Tech Minds. It is a modern platform for business communication and customer engagement.
• Similarly, I have written about Upside, co-founded by Joanna Kochaniak. It is a cashback platform connecting millions of users with hundreds of thousands of commercial locations. Simply put, it offers discounts and savings to consumers while providing merchants with consumer reach and buyer behavior analytics.

As a reminder, Joanna stepped down from executive management (she previously served as the company's CTO) and now collaborates with the firm as an advisor, contributing her expertise and skill set.

Educational Roots Tie Founders to Poland: Zaremba, Garbacki, and Others

What do the ties between these founders and Poland look like?

Only Joanna Kochaniak emigrated with her parents at a very early age - as a four-year-old girl. Tomas Gorny and Filip Kaliszan completed high school abroad (in Germany and France, respectively).

Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski moved abroad after high school to pursue their university degrees.

Wojciech Zaremba, Paweł Garbacki, Karol Hausman, and Kamil Bajda-Pawlikowski earned their master's degrees at Polish universities. Zaremba and Garbacki at the University of Warsaw, Hausman at Warsaw University of Technology, Bajda-Pawlikowski at Wrocław University of Science and Technology, sometimes studying concurrently in other countries.

This "educational bond" is significant because it means these entrepreneurs' ties to Poland were strengthened well into early adulthood. These connections are not purely sentimental or strictly familial. These unicorn founders had the opportunity to meet other talented Poles, achieved their first successes locally, and gained mentors in Poland.

However…

As their professional careers progressed, they decided to move abroad. None of the eight billion-dollar companies were founded in Poland, their creators never worked here in a major capacity, and none defended a PhD thesis in Poland, for instance.

Several of these future entrepreneurs gathered experience at global brands (e.g., Google, Palantir, Facebook) prior to founding their own companies, but always in overseas offices.

Growing in Poland: ElevenLabs, Verkada, Nextiva, Starburst

What is the current relationship between these unicorns and Poland? Have these companies gained anything from a business perspective in their founders' homeland?

Among early-stage investors, a Polish presence is known only in the case of ElevenLabs. Vinci, a fund under the state-owned Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK) Group, holds a minor stake in the company.

The Starburst team has publicly highlighted that a strong engineering team in Warsaw accompanied the company's growth from the very beginning.

ElevenLabs, Nextiva, Verkada, and Starburst all operate Polish subsidiaries.

The Polish founders open these offices in their country of birth rarely out of sentimentality alone. They know they can source exceptional talent here, enabling them to compete more effectively on the global stage.

"Poland was a natural choice for us when we considered expanding our engineering team outside the US"

– Filip Kaliszan's Verkada

On the occasion of opening their engineering hub in Kraków, representatives praised the knowledge, skill set, and mindset of Polish engineers, pointing out that they are committed, capable of building cutting-edge products, and pay close attention to detail.

"The more of a global presence we have, the more strongly we feel that Poland is a place where the future is being built."

– ElevenLabs representatives

They also made significant commitments. Upon securing the investment from the Polish Vinci fund, they announced the launch of AI Lab Poland - a "new initiative designed to bring together capital, technology creators, and academia."

"The goal is to support the next generation of Polish artificial intelligence companies so that, right from the start, they receive the support necessary to realize global ambitions"

– ElevenLabs representatives

What Will Poland Gain? Reputation and Ecosystem

What significance do these unicorns hold for Poland as a country? It spans both reputation and ecosystem development.

It must be emphasized that since the billion-dollar companies mentioned here are registered in the US, the vast majority of their enterprise value (such as tax revenue) remains there.

At the same time, the existence of unicorns with Polish roots cannot be overstated.

In 2025, Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, pointed to Poland as a potential investment destination. Why? Because, as he stated, Poland has "an incredible wealth of AI talent."

How does Hoffman know this? Evidently through the story of ElevenLabs.

Above all, these unicorns will help strengthen Poland's standing in the global economy if their founders decide to invest in subsequent startups - naturally, those founded by Poles, and ideally, those founded within Poland. Mati Staniszewski is already making such investments.

One can also envision the emergence of a Polish network of innovators tied to a specific company - modeled after the legendary "PayPal Mafia," whose members relied on one another when building subsequent major ventures.

I have written about this previously regarding ElevenLabs; certain seeds of such possibilities can already be seen with OpenAI, which employs a large number of Poles, as well as Starburst for the same reason.

Poland Far Behind India and Israel

Without a doubt, Poland must carefully leverage the unicorns built by Poles.

There are nations whose representatives have founded many times more billion-dollar companies in the US. By comparison, 96 unicorn founders came from India and 60 from Israel.

Among countries closer to home: 16 founders are from Ukraine and 10 from Romania.

We will not close this gap in numbers quickly. Our only viable strategy is to foster deeper relationships and more effective collaboration between the domestic ecosystem and unicorn founders based across the ocean.

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About the author

Michał Karbowiak

Journalist and business specialist covering stories that usually escape global media. Connecting Polish innovation with a global perspective.

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