Deedy: US economic incentives for Indian tech talent outweigh India by an order of magnitude
deedydas · x · 2026-10-11
Investor Deedy lists AI startups with at least one Indian-born founder — Perplexity ($20B), Skild ($14B+), Baseten ($13B), Together ($8B), Glean ($8B), Modal ($5B) — arguing economic incentives keep top Indian talent in the US.
Key points:
- Raising capital in the US is far easier with less dilution; many Indian companies are redomiciling to access US markets, and Indian VCs are rushing to invest stateside (ironically, VC managers are the only group incentivized to stay in India due to high management fees).
- India's biggest outcome, Zomato ($35B now, $8B at IPO), pales next to Cursor ($60B), OpenRouter ($8B), HuggingFace ($12B), which compound far faster with higher IRR.
- Engineers at these startups earn $1M/yr with $10M+ exits; Big Tech L6/L7 with 10 years of experience also clears $1M.
He stresses this isn't US-vs-India superiority — just that economic incentives for technologists are at least an order of magnitude higher in the US.
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