Neither Sundar Pichai nor Satya Nadella. Neither Arvind Krishna nor Nikesh Arora. Who is the highest paid Indian-origin CEO in not only the US but the world? The Wall Street Journal’s 2026 annual CEO compensation rankings revealed the name – which was quite unheard of until it became breaking news most recently. Even this name was missing from Forbes’ 2026 list of America’s 250 Most Successful Living Immigrants. He is Welltower’s CEO Shankh Mitra, the highest paid Indian American and the world’s second highest paid CEO.

Who is Indian American CEO Shankh Mitra?

Born in Kolkata, Shankh Mitra is an Indian American business leader whose journey from India to one of the highest-paid leadership positions in the world reflects the American Dream. Unlike many Indian-origin CEOs who built their careers in tech, Mitra chose a different path. He built his reputation in finance, investment management, healthcare, and real estate before becoming the CEO and Vice Chairman of Welltower.

Mitra earned his Bachelor’s degree in Instrumentation and Electronics Engineering from Jadavpur University, a most prestigious institute in east India. Driven by a keen interest in capital markets, he moved to the USA to pursue an MBA in Applied Value Investing from New York’s Columbia Business School. The combination of engineering discipline and financial expertise would later become the foundation of his investment philosophy.

His career began at PwC, followed by leadership roles at Fidelity Investments, Citadel, and Millennium Management, where he specialized in real estate investments and capital allocation. In 2016, Welltower appointed him as Chief Investment Officer. Just four years later, in October 2020, he was promoted to CEO and Vice Chairman at a time when the company’s biggest business vertical – senior housing – was facing unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

CEO Shankh Mitra’s salary and net worth

Welltower CEO and Chairman Shankh Mitra’s salary package in 2026 made him the world’s second highest paid executive next to Elon Musk. His headline-grabbing $821.1 million compensation package is not a traditional salary. Mitra received a base salary of about $1.3 million and a cash bonus of approximately $6.5 million, while more than 99 percent of the compensation came through long-term stock incentives worth over $813 million.

The stock incentives are designed to vest over the next several years and closely linked to Welltower’s future performance as well as shareholder returns. Half of the shares will vest only in 2031 if he continues to lead the company. The remaining shares depend on Welltower’s market value if it increases by 45% over the next 5 years beating major stock market indexes.

CEO Shankh Mitra is the world’s highest paid Indian-origin business leader in USA, but not a billionaire unlike Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai. Shankh Mitra’s net worth is a little more than $21 million, according to some sources; whereas some sources refer to his net worth of $30 million. It is obvious that he is yet to enter the elite club of billionaire CEOs.

His billion-dollar bet on America’s aging population

The real story behind Shankh Mitra’s success is not executive compensation. It is his conviction that America’s rapidly aging population would reshape the country’s healthcare real estate market. Every day, thousands of Americans reach retirement age, increasing demand for independent living communities, assisted living facilities, memory care centers, and outpatient healthcare services. By the end of this decade, every Baby Boomer will be at least 65 years old, making senior housing one of the fastest-growing segments of the US real estate industry.

When the Covid pandemic severely disrupted senior housing in 2020, many investors viewed the sector as risky. Occupancy rates had fallen, operating costs had surged, and several companies delayed expansion plans. Mitra saw the downturn differently. Instead of waiting for conditions to improve, he identified the temporary slowdown as a rare opportunity to acquire high-quality assets before demand rebounded.

How Shankh Mitra built Welltower into a $160 billion empire

Under Mitra’s leadership, the company invested more than $40 billion to acquire thousands of senior housing units across North America. Today, Welltower owns more than 2,500 senior living communities, making it the largest owner of senior housing in the industry and the world’s largest publicly traded real estate company, with a market value approaching $160 billion.

Beyond acquisitions, Mitra repositioned Welltower’s portfolio by focusing on premium senior housing markets and strengthening partnerships with leading operators. The company’s ability to anticipate demographic trends and invest during a period of uncertainty has made it one of Wall Street’s biggest real estate success stories.

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Tech billionaire Elon Musk rightly said, “I think America has immensely benefited from talented Indians. I mean America has been an immense beneficiary of talent from India.” This weighs in on why American conglomerates continue to welcome Indian-origin talents to the C-suite. Indian American CEOs, from Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy to Asha Sharma (CEO of Microsoft Gaming) to Shailesh Jejurikar (Procter & Gamble CEO), are reshaping the US economy, from tech to FMCG to healthcare. Keeping up with the trend, Sridhar Kuppanna and Venkat Kavarthapu, recently joined the elite club of Indian-origin CEOs in USA.

New Indian American CEOs: Sridhar Kuppanna and Venkat Kavarthapu

Sridhar and Venkat from South India started their ‘American Dream’ journey on an H1B Visa (the most disputed US visa) after having studied in India. Both are from South India where higher education is an ambition in itself. Symplr, a US healthcare technology giant, appointed Venkat Kavarthapu as its CEO on 13 April, and Sridhar Kuppanna was named CEO of ST Engineering iDirect, a global satellite communications company, on 31 March.

Who is CEO Sridhar Kuppanna in USA

Sridhar was born and raised in Tamil Nadu, where he built his academic foundation in technology. He completed his undergraduate studies in computer science from the University of Madras and went on to earn a Master of Computer Applications from Alagappa University, Tamil Nadu. India’s telecom boom in the 1990s became the launchpad for his career before he moved to the USA in the early 2000s.

Today, with over 25 years of experience, Sridhar Kuppanna is a seasoned telecom and network technology leader. Known for his deep engineering expertise and long career in global communications infrastructure, he has steadily risen through technical and leadership roles to lead one of the world’s key satellite technology companies.

Career highlights and leadership journey:

• Former Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Engineering at the same company (2023–2026)
• Over 16 years at Ribbon Communications in senior engineering and leadership roles
• Recognized industry expert in satellite communications, 5G networks, and cloud-based connectivity
• Named “CTO of the Year (2025)” in telecom industry circles
• Early career at Ind-Telesoft in India, working on telecom software and network systems

Who is newly appointed Symplr CEO Venkat Kavarthapu

Like Satya Nadella, Venkat Kavarthapu is from Hyderabad that sends to USA not only meritorious students but also aspiring leaders. His journey from Hyderabad to Houston, where Symplr’s headquarters is located, reflects the rise of India-educated leaders worldwide. He earned his Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication from Osmania University, Hyderabad, and studied MBA at IIM Lucknow. His career started in India’s IT sector before he travelled to the US to join Edifecs in 2009.   

He saw the best of his career for 15 years at Edifecs, a leading healthcare data management company. He rose through ranks and responsibilities, and became CEO of Edifecs in 2021. By the time he resigned from his position of Edifecs’ CEO, he became an established name in the US healthcare tech industry. At Symplr, CEO Venkat Kavarthapu focuses on leveraging AI and data-driven analytics to improve efficiency, compliance, and patient outcomes across the US.           

The post Sridhar Kuppanna and Venkat Kavarthapu: A Tale of Two New Indian American CEOs first appeared on Indian Eagle Blog | US-India Travel News | Diaspora Stories.

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While technology giants are burning cash to establish their supremacy over artificial intelligence, 28-year-old Varun Mohan is capitalizing on it. He chose to be with Google for his next milestone in the hard-edged competition among Alphabet Inc., Facebook Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI. Global netizens are wondering why Alphabet Inc’s CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman betted billions of dollars on Indian American Varun Mohan, who turned down OpenAI’s whopping $3bn offer for less – a $2.4 billion deal from Google.

Varun Mohan’s deal with Google catapulted him and his partner Douglas Chen on the threshold of the elite club of Indian American billionaires. Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Raj Sardana, and Nikesh Arora are the new members of this club, according to Forbes’ 2025 list of richest immigrants.

Who is Indian American Varun Mohan?

Varun Mohan is CEO and co-founder of Windsurf, an AI coding startup. Born to Indian immigrant parents in Sunnyvale, California, he was raised in a household shaped by Indian values and driven by American Dream. From a young age, Varun was drawn to technology and problem-solving. At The Harker School in San Jose, he stood out for his exceptional talent in math and computing, which earned him the moniker – a math prodigy. As an Olympiad achiever in math and computing, he developed a deeply analytical bent of mind that laid the foundation for his success as a tech entrepreneur in America.

Varun Mohan’s educational qualifications include both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from MIT University in Massachusetts. He earned a dual degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a tough combination that few meritorious students choose to pursue. At MIT, Mohan specialized in operating systems, distributed computing, machine learning, performance engineering, and algorithms.

Varun Mohan’s Career Journey from an Intern to CEO

Before launching the coding startup Windsurf, Varun Mohan built a strong professional foundation by working with some of the most respected tech companies in the world. During his time at MIT, he interned at Quora, LinkedIn, Samsung, Cloudian, and Databricks, gaining hands-on experience in machine learning systems, cloud storage, and data infrastructure. After graduation, he joined the self-driving car startup Nuro, where he rose to the rank of Lead Software Engineer.

In 2021, Varun co-founded Windsurf with Douglas Chen, his batchmate at MIT. As the CEO of Windsurf, he introduced Cascade, an AI-native development environment where engineers could write, test, and refactor code simply by speaking to their systems. Within months, over a million developers adopted it. The company raised around $240 million in funding and reached a valuation of $1.25 billion, making it one of the fastest-growing AI startups in the US Silicon Valley. A few months ago, Forbes named Windsurf as one of the top 50 AI companies in the world.

Why Varun Mohan Rejected OpenAI’s $3bn Offer for Google

It is said that the AI technology that Varun Mohan and his team at Windsurf built triggered Google DeepMind vs OpenAI. Varun was close to signing OpenAI’s $3-billion offer for Windsurf, but things fell apart when Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest investor, raised concerns over potential conflicts with its own product, GitHub Copilot. The disagreement stopped the deal halfway. Instead, he chose Google where he won’t lose his ownership as CEO of Windsurf. Precisely, Windsurf continues to run as an independent company and sell its technology to other clients.

Is 17-year-old Pranjali Awasthi the next Varun Mohan? She is the founder and CEO of Delv.AI, a disruptive startup for the online search landscape dominated by Google.

The $2.4 billion deal with Google DeepMind is not a full acquisition of Windsurf by Alphabet. Rather, it is a licensing and talent deal that gives Google non-exclusive rights to key Windsurf technologies without taking ownership of the company. Under the deal, he, along with his business partner and selected talents from the R&D team have joined Google DeepMind, Alphabet Inc.’s dedicated AI research division, to advance agentic coding projects and integrate their tools into Gemini.

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The post Who is Varun Mohan? Windsurf CEO who Rejected OpenAI’s $3bn Offer to Join Google for $2.4bn first appeared on Indian Eagle Blog | US-India Travel News | Diaspora Stories.

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Four decades after Rakesh Sharma’s historic 1984 spaceflight, India is all set to make a grand comeback to human spaceflight with Captain Shubhanshu Shukla as a pilot of Axiom Space’s Ax-4 Mission scheduled on May 29, 2025. The Ax-4 Mission, as long as 14 to 21 days, aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is a collaboration between Axiom Space, NASA, and ISRO. Making the human spaceflight mission a lot more special for India’s future is not only Shubhanshu Shukla from the Indian Air Force, but also Indian American Tejpaul Bhatia, the newly appointed CEO of Axiom Space.

Axiom Space, headquartered in Houston, specializes in building and operating a commercial space station for human spaceflights as a leading space infrastructure developer. Most recently, Axiom Space passed the ‘CEO’ baton to Indian-origin Tejpaul Bhatia, who joined the company as Chief Revenue Officer in 2021. His appointment as CEO of Axiom Space with a valuation of US$2 billion came at a pivotal moment, as both ISRO and NASA teamed with Axiom to send four astronauts to the International Space Mission, including Shubhanshu Shukla.

In a statement, Bhatia expressed his long-standing passion for space exploration: “I’ve been inspired by space exploration since childhood, and leading Axiom Space at this critical inflection point in human spaceflight is the realization of a lifelong ambition.” With Bhatia at the helm, Axiom Space is aiming even higher. The company’s big goal is to build Axiom Station, the world’s first fully commercial human space station, and to attach its first module to the ISS by 2027.

Born to Indian immigrant parents in New York, Tejpaul Bhatia, as Axiom Space CEO, entered the elite C-suite of America where he shares space with other Indian American CEOs of major conglomerates, like Neal Mohan at YouTube, Sridhar Ramaswamy at Snowflake, and Ravi Kumar Singisetti at Cognizant, other than Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Arvind Krishnan, and Santanu Narayen. Bhatia holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Columbia University.

Since he joined Axiom Inc. from Google in 2021, he has been the instrumental in securing revenue-generating deals and contracts worth over one billion dollars in total. With his 25 years of experience, business acumen, and technology leadership, he headed four revolutionary human spaceflight missions that put Axiom Space a notch higher above other private players in commercial space ventures, while transforming commercial spaceflight into a scalable business.

Before his ‘American Dream’ career skyrocketed as CEO of Axiom Space, he played a key role in leading strategic narrative for Google Cloud to startup founders, venture capital firms, and Fortune 100 corporations. He drove Google’s narrative on the future of work through direct CXO engagements and thought leadership across industries, according to his LinkedIn profile. In May 2018, he had joined Google as the startup ecosystem manager in New York City and worked with the startup community as an ambassador of Google Cloud.

Under Bhatia’s leadership, Axiom Space is strengthening international partnerships and bridging commercial innovation with national space agencies like ISRO and NASA. His role in the Ax-4 mission underscores Indian Diaspora’s growing contributions to global science and technology. Like many Indian-Americans, Bhatia embodies this rising influence, joining the ranks of Indian-origin leaders who are helping to shape America’s future.

Other than climbing the totem pole through his professional milestones in American corporate, Axiom Space CEO Tejpaul Bhatia actively contributes to non-profit organizations, like serving in voluntary leadership roles at the Make-A-Wish Foundation. His journey from an immigrant family to the CEO of a pioneering human spaceflight company is an inspiration, embodying the possibilities that arise from perseverance and vision.

The post Indian American Tejpaul Bhatia is New CEO of Axiom Space that is Set to Mark India’s Return to Human Spaceflight first appeared on Indian Eagle Blog | US-India Travel News | Diaspora Stories.

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