Archive · 18 Aug 2026
Indian man with $3 built $9.3 billion tech empire
A man named Romesh Wadhwani came to America a long time ago with almost no money.
He had less than three dollars when he arrived in 1969.
He went to school and earned a very high degree called a PhD.
Then he decided to start his own company, even though he had never done that before.
Many investors said no to him, but he kept trying.
His company became very successful and was sold for billions of dollars.
When he was 70 years old, he started a new company that works with artificial intelligence, which is like teaching computers to think and learn.
He believes AI will change jobs, so people need to keep learning new skills.
He also started a foundation to help people create jobs and become entrepreneurs.
Romesh Wadhwani arrived in Pittsburgh in 1969 with less than three dollars to pursue graduate school.
His company Aspect Development was sold for $9.3 billion in 2000.
He approached 125 investment firms and was rejected by most before his breakthrough.
At age 70, in 2017, he founded SymphonyAI with a $1 billion commitment of his own money.
Wadhwani says AI will both create and destroy jobs, urging India's young workforce to reskill continuously.
- Who
- Romesh Wadhwani, an Indian-American entrepreneur born just days after Partition to parents who left Karachi and rebuilt their lives in India.
- What
- Built a $9.3 billion tech empire after arriving in the US with less than three dollars, later founding SymphonyAI at age 70.
- When
- Arrived in the US in 1969; Aspect Development was sold in 2000; SymphonyAI was founded in 2017.
- Where
- Pittsburgh, where he arrived for graduate school, and later Silicon Valley, where he moved to pursue bigger ambitions.
- Why
- Driven by a belief in education, resilience, and ambition, and the conviction that knowledge, hard work, and ambition could matter more than family background.
- Arrival in US
- 1969, Pittsburgh, with less than $3
- Education
- Completed a PhD; encountered early AI thinkers at Carnegie Mellon
- Investor pitches
- Approached 125 investment firms; most rejected him
- Major exit
- Aspect Development sold for $9.3 billion in 2000
- SymphonyAI founding
- Founded in 2017 at age 70 with $1 billion of his own money
- Wadhwani Foundation
- Focused on job creation and entrepreneurship
- Childhood illness
- Contracted polio at age 2; could not walk until age 5
- First company
- American Robot, which worked on an AI-based vision system