Last Week in Immigration, Venture & Entrepreneurship — Week of June 29, 2026

America's most consequential companies keep being built by people who weren't born here. Every Monday, we track the capital moving toward them and the rules shaping whether they can stay. This week: three immigrant-founded companies closed notable rounds — including one of the largest AI infrastructure raises of the year — and a Supreme Court ruling settled one of the most consequential questions facing immigrant families in a generation, while a new USCIS filing rule takes effect in four days.

Last week we marked America's 250th birthday the only way we know how: by naming 250 of the people who built it.

"250 Years of America. 250 Builders Who Made It." went live on the Unshackled Substack on July 1. It is a curated list of 250 founders, scientists, and engineers who came from somewhere else and changed what is possible here — spanning 58 countries of origin across 12 industries. The bar was simple: did they found something that changed an industry, build lasting infrastructure, or move the frontier forward? The companies they built — NVIDIA, Stripe, Anthropic, SpaceX, DoorDash, Palo Alto Networks, Databricks, and dozens more — are worth trillions in public markets alone and have collectively created millions of jobs.

What I keep returning to as I look at that list: this is not a moment's work. This is what happens when a country holds the door open long enough for ambition to compound. The chips powering the AI revolution were designed by someone born in Taiwan. The mRNA platform that changed medicine was developed by scientists from Turkey and France. The rockets that made America a space power again were engineered by a kid from South Africa. None of them were born here — and yet all of them left home to build here. That choice, made 250 times over, is the story.

It is also the thesis we have staked a fund on. Backing immigrant founders isn't a values statement — it is a pattern recognition exercise with a decade of return data behind it.

• Manan

Three immigrant-founded companies raised notable rounds this week. The section is anchored by one of the largest AI infrastructure raises of the year.

Together AI - $800M Series C at $8.3B valuation, announced July 1. Vipul Ved Prakash was among the first wave of internet users in India in 1999. He has been building in the United States ever since — founding Cloudmark (acquired by Proofpoint for $110M), selling Topsy to Apple for a reported $200M+, and co-founding Together AI in 2022. The company's premise is direct: generative AI should be open and abundant, not controlled by a handful of closed platforms. Together AI runs an AI native cloud that lets enterprises and developers train and deploy workloads using open-source models — DeepSeek, Nemotron, MiniMax, and others — at a fraction of the cost of proprietary systems. The $800M Series C was led by Aramco Ventures, with Vista Equity Partners, General Catalyst, Emergence Capital, and NVIDIA participating. Prakash's co-founders are Stanford professor Percy Liang and ETH Zurich/University of Chicago associate professor Ce Zhang. Total capital raised now exceeds $1.2B. Sources: Together AI announcement, July 1 | TechCrunch, July 1

8090 Labs - $135M Series A, announced June 29. Chamath Palihapitiya was born in Sri Lanka, moved to Canada as a child, and eventually landed at Facebook — where he led growth to over 700 million users. He has been building and investing in the US for two decades. His latest company, 8090 Labs, takes on enterprise software development itself: a platform where teams of people and AI agents build and modify enterprise code together. The Series A was led by Salesforce Ventures, with Craft Ventures, WndrCo, The Production Board, and angel investors including Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora participating. Palihapitiya stepped in as CEO alongside the raise — an unusual move for a founder-investor of his profile, and a signal about how seriously he is treating this bet. Sources: TechCrunch, June 29 | Business Wire, June 30

Warp - $60M Series B, announced June 29. Ayush Sharma grew up in a small town in India — by his own account, the first person from a 250-million-population state to attend MIT for undergrad. He didn't arrive at payroll from a consulting slide. He ran payroll himself at a prior startup, lost weeks to multi-state tax filings, and built Warp to solve the problem from the inside out. Warp is an AI-native human capital management platform — payroll, HR, compliance, benefits, onboarding, and IT operations on a single system — designed to execute autonomously, not just surface tasks for administrators. The Series B was led by Battery Ventures, with Peak XV Partners, Sound Ventures, Y Combinator, and operator angels including Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke participating. Total funding: $85M in under a year. The platform has processed over $600M in payroll and is on pace to cross $2B in annualized volume. Sources: Warp announcement | Battery Ventures, June 25

The throughline: an India-born open-source AI infrastructure founder, a Sri Lanka-born enterprise software builder, and an India-born founder who experienced the problem before he built the solution. Three different paths in, three different sectors, one pattern — the founders who build the most durable companies often got there through direct exposure to a problem that the market hadn't solved for someone like them.

See a growth round we missed? If an immigrant-founded company closed a growth round and it's not here, hit reply and tell us - we'll feature it next week.

Four developments this week — one Supreme Court ruling that settles a long-running threat, one time-sensitive operational deadline in four days, one rule still in transit, and one proposed overhaul of a pathway increasingly relevant to the portfolio.

SCOTUS rules 6-3: birthright citizenship stands. On June 30, the Supreme Court struck down Executive Order 14160 in Trump v. Barbara, affirming that children born in the United States to parents on temporary or non-immigrant visas — H-1B, F-1, J-1, L-1, and others — are United States citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for a five-justice majority; Justice Kavanaugh concurred on statutory grounds, making it 6-3. The order never took effect — it had been blocked by every lower court to consider it — and the Court's ruling ends the legal challenge entirely. For immigrant founders and H-1B workers raising families in the United States during what can be a decade-plus green card wait, this removes a live threat that had complicated long-term US commitment decisions. The ruling is grounded in 150-plus years of constitutional precedent and is durable. The residual watch item: Rep. Chip Roy and others have called for Congress to legislate a new definition of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." No bill has advanced. Sources: Supreme Court opinion, June 30 | CBS News, June 30 | PBS News

USCIS signature rule takes effect July 10 — four days from now. Starting this Thursday, USCIS can deny any immigration benefit request — H-1B petition, green card application, EAD extension, I-539 — that contains a missing or invalid signature, even after the agency has already accepted and issued a receipt. Previously, applicants could correct signature defects after the fact. Under the new interim final rule, a denial closes the case, the filing fee is not refunded, and a new application must be submitted from scratch. This applies to all filings submitted on or after July 10. The rule does not change who qualifies for what — it only raises the cost of procedural errors. For any portfolio company with filings in the queue: conduct a signature audit now, before the window closes. Sources: DHS interim final rule | Newsweek, June 30 | Mwakilishi, July 5

Duration of Status final rule: OMB-cleared but not yet published. The rule eliminating open-ended "Duration of Status" for F-1 and J-1 visa holders — replacing it with a fixed four-year admission ceiling, a shortened 30-day grace period, and required USCIS extension filings for longer programs — cleared its final White House review on June 17. As of this writing, it has not yet been published in the Federal Register, which is the trigger for its 60-day countdown to an approximately September 2026 effective date. When it publishes — which is expected any day — the interaction between the four-year cap and STEM OPT extension periods will be the most consequential detail to watch. For founders and employers with current STEM OPT employees: model the timeline now, before the publication notice lands. Sources: RealClearMarkets, June 30 | Mondaq / Global Immigration Blog, June 30

EB-5 NPRM published July 2 — comment period through August 31. DHS published its first comprehensive proposed rulemaking to implement the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, codifying investment minimums ($800K in targeted employment areas, $1.05M standard), expanded anti-fraud enforcement authority, mandatory audits and site visits for regional centers, and new promoter registration requirements. The rule also introduces investor protections for those harmed by a regional center's misconduct. Public comment period closes August 31. This rule is proposed, not final, and mostly codifies statutory requirements already in effect since 2022 — so near-term disruption is low. The relevance for Unshackled's portfolio: EB-5 is not a primary founder pathway, but it becomes material for founders with exit liquidity who remain stuck in decade-plus EB-1/EB-2 India priority date backlogs. Cleaner rules and stronger investor protections could make it a more credible option than it has been; the prior era of regional center failures made many immigration attorneys reluctant to recommend it. Source: WR Immigration, July 1 | Erickson Immigration Group, July 1 | Federal Register, July 2

The steady posture: a Supreme Court that handed immigrant families a durable constitutional win, and an agency calendar that keeps adding procedural demands on top of unchanged substantive eligibility. Both things can be true at once. Courts rule, agencies adjust, founders build through all of it. The model for backing immigrant founders has worked across every version of this environment.

What to watch: D/S final rule Federal Register publication (expected imminently — triggers 60-day clock toward September effective date); USCIS signature rule takes effect July 10; EB-5 comment deadline August 31; First Circuit ruling on $100K H-1B fee appeal (still pending).

Did we miss something - or do you see it differently? If there's a development we should be tracking, or you've got a read from the ground, hit reply. We read every note, and we want this section to reflect what founders are actually living, not just what's in the Federal Register.

That's the week. The people building the most important companies in the world keep making the same choice — to leave home, come here, and build. Two hundred and fifty years of evidence suggests that bet keeps compounding