TOI correspondent from Washington: In the summer of 1976, the Kanpur-born teenage engineering student at BITS Pilani stood in the lobby of the US Embassy in New Delhi after being denied a student visa for the third time. His father, who had come with him, refused to go. She had seen the photo of the consular officer in the lobby, learned that he had gone out for lunch, and decided that she would wait to ask him why her son was being denied a visa even though admission to three universities was confirmed and all the documents were in order. Persistence worked. Half a century later, that student, Sanjay Mehrotra, is CEO of Micron Technology, the memory-chip giant that on Tuesday eclipsed the $1 trillion market capitalization that fueled Wall Street’s AI frenzy and joined the top 10 U.S. companies by valuation, surpassing more well-known giants like Walmart, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. It’s one of Silicon Valley’s most incredible stories: A guy repeatedly shunned by America became the manager of one of America’s most strategically important technology companies in the MAGA era. He is not alone. Mehrotra’s rise also completes an extraordinary desi tableau at the top of corporate America. The world’s three most valuable technology companies – Microsoft, Alphabet and Micron, with market caps exceeding trillions – are now run by Indian-origin executives who arrived in America as middle-class strugglers with nothing but engineering talent, parental sacrifice and a quiet fire in the belly. Satya Nadella Grew up in Hyderabad as the son of a civil servant. Sundar Pichai He was brought up in a modest apartment in Chennai where the family once shared a rotary telephone. Mehrotra also came from a middle-class family in Kanpur that did not even have a phone. During his formative years in America calls to his parents were always via “PP” – “neighbor’s phone” – calling a neighbor who had a landline, who called his parents. Amazingly, their collective rise is now reshaping both Silicon Valley and the political debate over globalization in Donald Trump’s MAGA-backed America.Unlike Pichai and Nadella, who already inherited major software empires, Mehrotra’s achievement has been more industrial and arguably more difficult. Memory chips are cyclical, highly capital-intensive, and historically dominated by Asian giants like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. When Mehrotra became CEO of Micron in 2017, the company was worth about $20 billion. Today, Micron has reached the trillion-dollar mark amid an AI-driven explosion in demand for high-bandwidth memory chips that power data centers. Wall Street’s sudden fascination with Micron — driving the stock up 180 percent in 2026, including a 75 percent rise in May alone — reflects a terrible realization: AI may run on Nvidia processors, but it remembers via Micron memory. Micron’s rally has been so intense in recent days that President Trump personally praised the company as “one of the most popular stocks” after hosting Mehrotra at the White House, amid allegations of insider trading after allegations surfaced that Trump owned a stake of between $50,000 and $100,000 in Micron stock. Trump later took Mehrotra on his trip to China as part of a high-profile business delegation — a remarkable embrace from a president whose political movement has often attacked globalization and immigration.That tension now defines the Indian-American CEO moment in modern America that goes beyond the tech trio. MAGA activists and economic nationalists are accusing Indian-led technology companies of outsourcing jobs, favoring Indian engineers in hiring, and maintaining divided loyalties between the United States and India. In recent days, IBM’s Arvind Krishna – another Trump favorite – has come under fire from right-wing activists angry over the company’s huge Indian workforce. Similar allegations have been leveled against Microsoft’s Nadella and Google’s Pichai from time to time. Yet the same White House that is against globalization also relentlessly oppresses these executives because they now control companies central to America’s technological supremacy against China. Few industries illustrate that paradox more clearly than memory chips where Micron has invested extensively in India following ventures in Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, China and Malaysia. As part of India’s $2.75 billion effort to enter the global semiconductor supply chain, the company is investing over $800 million of its capital to build an ATMP (Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging) facility in Sanand, Gujarat. The Sanand facility is rapidly hiring engineers, automation specialists, manufacturing experts and quality technicians for its 500,000-square-foot cleanroom space, one of the largest single-floor assembly and test cleanrooms anywhere in the world, as India races to transform itself from a software-services back office to a hardware manufacturing hub.For Mehrotra it’s more personal. Unlike many Silicon Valley executives who maintain only formal ties with India, he has repeatedly viewed Micron’s India expansion as a strategic long-term investment in engineering talent and manufacturing depth. Symbolism matters: The student who was once denied entry to the US is now helping define America’s semiotic relationship with India.Still, the parallels with Nadella and Pichai are striking. Under Nadella, Microsoft’s market value has increased 10-fold – from about $300 billion in 2014 to more than $3 trillion today, largely through cloud computing and AI. Pichai, who became CEO in 2019, has seen 4x growth — from $1 billion to a $4 trillion-plus club that has only one other member, Nvidia. This is while navigating antitrust battles, AI disruption, and political scrutiny over search dominance. All three men have some management qualities in common: low-key demeanor, engineering passion, incrementalism over theatrics, and an aversion to Silicon Valley celebrity culture. None resemble the flamboyant founder ideal popularized by other tech giants like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. He is a smooth operator, not a showman. In an industry once dominated by charismatic dropouts – Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison – corporate America has quietly shifted toward tech immigrant executives with deep managerial discipline.That change is not accidental. The AI age is rewarding operational complexity, supply-chain coordination, and geopolitical balancing rather than pure product charisma. Mehrotra presents that change well. He co-founded SanDisk before leading Micron into one of the most important moments in semiconductor history. Today, memory chips are at the center of the AI arms race between the United States and China. Micron’s fortunes are now tied not just to consumer electronics but to national security, data centers and global power politics.The irony is rich. A young Indian student once struggled to convince America that he was entitled to enter the country. Today, Washington views it as essential to maintaining America’s technological dominance. And somewhere in the story lies a larger truth about modern America: Even in an age of MAGA nativism and skepticism about globalization, some of the companies at the heart of American power are increasingly run by Indian immigrants, who have come after denied visas, middle-class anxieties, and parents willing to wait endlessly in embassy lobbies for a second chance.
