{"id":1968,"date":"2026-06-22T17:17:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T17:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1968"},"modified":"2026-06-22T17:17:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T17:17:02","slug":"americans-are-fleeing-the-u-s-at-record-rates-an-ex-google-engineer-who-left-india-to-build-a-7-2-billion-ai-firm-says-theyre-making-a-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1968","title":{"rendered":"Americans are fleeing the U.S. at record rates\u2014an ex-Google engineer who left India to build a $7.2 billion AI firm says they\u2019re making a mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cThere are certain things in the U.S. today that are challenging,\u201d Jain told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cBut I think it remains the land of opportunity. It remains the place where entrepreneurship is celebrated.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Australia scores its largest defense export ever with a $1.75 billion long-range radar deal with Canada<\/a><\/p>\n

He would know. Jain left a small town in northern India, Jaipur\u2014where, by his own account, 95% of people never left\u2014moved to America in 1986 with nothing but an engineering degree and went on to become one of Google\u2019s distinguished engineers before co-founding not one, but two unicorns: The cloud data company Rubrik and, most recently, Glean, currently valued at around $7.2 billion.<\/p>\n

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America may be grappling with rising costs, political instability, and a growing distrust of its institutions.<\/p>\n

But Jain insists it remains the only place in the world where anybody can become somebody with a billion-dollar company (or two), like him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can just graduate from college, have no experience, but if you have an idea, you will find people who will be willing to invest in you,\u201d he said. \u201cI think all of those things remain intact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Americans are escaping the U.S. at a rate not seen since the Great Depression<\/h2>\n

The numbers tell a stark story. The U.S. recorded a net negative migration of between 10,000 and 295,000 people in 2025\u2014the first time in at least 50 years that more people moved out than moved in, according to The Brookings Institution. To put that into context, negative net migration hasn\u2019t happened in the U.S. for almost a century, not since the Great Depression.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Up to 405,000 left voluntarily, pushed by a volatile political climate, an immigration crackdown, and a cost of living that is squeezing even high-earners on six-figure salaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nearly 9 in 10 of those attending this May\u2019s Move Abroad Con\u2014where 600 Americans gathered specifically to plan their exits\u2014blamed the government, Expatsi co-founder Jen Barnett told CNBC<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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In fact, searches from U.S. users for \u201cmove to Canada,\u201d \u201cmove to Italy,\u201d and \u201cmove to Portugal\u201d spiked overnight on the evening of the Trump vs. Biden debate in June of 2024. The biggest spike of those searches occurred when President Trump was first elected.<\/p>\n

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Ex-OpenAI researcher Miki Habryn didn\u2019t want to leave\u2014but felt she had no option: the engineer, who had a six-figure salary, a San Francisco home, and a dream job, packed up her family and\u00a0moved to Stockholm, saying she couldn\u2019t sleep at night under Trump\u2019s America.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI just got to the point of: It\u2019s time to go, I can\u2019t just stay here and do nothing, but doing anything comes with such terrible risks for me because of my status,\u201d Habryn previously told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cDuring the campaign, it was immigrants and transgender people that was occupying the airways, and since I\u2019m both, they\u2019ve got me coming and going effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Meet the 2 men putting New York\u2019s $300 billion pension fund in play for the first time in 20 years<\/a><\/p>\n

Many others have fled America in search of adventure, growth, and more money in their pocket at the end of the month, according to Barnett. And at the same time, fewer people are moving in: migration fell from 2.7 million in 2024 to 1.3 million last summer.<\/p>\n

Jain has noticed it too. \u201cFewer people are making the decision to actually come to the U.S. these days,\u201d he said, while adding that he\u2019s seeing a big dip in the number of international students choosing American universities.<\/p>\n

But in his eyes, there\u2019s never been a better time to move there\u2014especially as AI turns Silicon Valley into the center of gravity for the global economy.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMaybe we\u2019re in a bubble, but I live in Silicon Valley, and this is the land of innovation today,\u201d he added. \u201cAI is the big thing\u2014that\u2019s it. Most startups in that space are getting formed here.\u201d<\/p>\n

From Nvidia to AMD, Silicon Valley\u2019s most powerful CEOs have one thing in common: they weren\u2019t born in America<\/h2>\n

If you wanted more proof that the American dream is alive and well, then look no further than the CEOs of some of America\u2019s biggest companies\u2014many of whom weren\u2019t born there. Like Jain, they were able to build lives and companies far bigger than anything their birthplaces could have offered them.<\/p>\n

Jensen Huang was born in Taiwan and briefly raised in Thailand before immigrating to the U.S. at age 9. His first job was washing dishes at Denny\u2019s, and he went on to found Nvidia\u2014now the world\u2019s most valuable company. His cousin, AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su, also immigrated from Taiwan at age 3 and turned the struggling chipmaker into an $876 billion AI powerhouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dan Rogers, the CEO of work management platform Asana, escaped the U.K. for a better career in the U.S. He planned his Stateside move from the age of 14, working his way through Dell, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, and ServiceNow before landing the top job in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

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His explanation for why he wanted to work in the Bay Area is basic math; he told Fortune<\/em>: \u201cI looked at the Fortune 50 AI list, 30 of the 50 are in the Bay Area. There is this inordinate concentration\u2014and because of that concentration, it is self-reinforcing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambitious people know where the hottest tech companies are, so they flock there\u2014as do investors. And so it continues to become a hotbed for innovation. Or the no.1 destination for anyone looking to turn an idea into an empire.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSilicon Valley was, and is once again, with the AI companies, a real magnet for something special, for people that want to have an outsized impact,\u201d Rogers said, adding that \u201cthe hive of activity, the obsessiveness, the quality of talent, the access to funding and new ideas is second to none.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more The Supreme Court reinstates murder conviction for NYC boy Etan Patz, one of the first missing kids on a milk carton<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arvind Jain left India for Silicon Valley, built two billion-dollar companies, and insists the U.S. “remains the land of opportunity” as Americans flee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[300],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-view-from-the-c-suite"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericans are fleeing the U.S. at record rates\u2014an ex-Google engineer who left India to build a $7.2 billion AI firm says they\u2019re making a mistake - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1968\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Americans are fleeing the U.S. at record rates\u2014an ex-Google engineer who left India to build a $7.2 billion AI firm says they\u2019re making a mistake - 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