American Exceptionalism: Why America Keeps Producing Companies That Change the World
Apple, OpenAI and SpaceX show a national strength worth defending: the ability to turn difficult ideas into companies that can challenge established leaders.
On May 30, 2020, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley launched from Florida aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon. It was the first launch of astronauts to orbit from the United States since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011. An American company, working with NASA, had helped restore a capability the country had lost. NASA’s launch report
Apple won a leading position in Japan’s phone market. OpenAI brought conversational AI to a mass audience. Alongside SpaceX, they show why America should keep financing ambitious work and giving new competitors a chance.
The ability to produce a challenger
Apple entered a Japanese phone market with experienced domestic manufacturers and mobile services that predated the iPhone. It supplied more new mobile phones to the market than any other company in the 12 months ending March 2013. Its share reached 50.1 percent in the 12 months ending March 2026. These figures count phones supplied to the market, including smartphones and simpler mobile phones; they do not measure how many people owned an iPhone. MM Research’s first-lead report, the latest full-year figures
Apple won customers from experienced Japanese phone makers by combining its hardware, software and apps with sales through Japanese mobile networks. It was an American commercial success in a market with strong domestic competitors.
OpenAI’s challenge began differently. It released ChatGPT as a free research preview in November 2022. Google opened public access to Bard in the United States and United Kingdom the following March. OpenAI had made conversational AI something the public could try before Google offered that particular competing service. OpenAI’s release, Google’s public rollout
OpenAI did not need Google’s full range of businesses to compete with it. It needed a chatbot people wanted to use and the money and computers to keep it running.
Ideas need a way to reach people
Google researchers introduced the Transformer, a model design for processing sequences such as words, in 2017. OpenAI used that design in its 2018 research, training a model on large amounts of text before adapting it to specific tasks. Google’s paper, OpenAI’s research
Published research lets other teams try new applications. OpenAI could build on Google’s work without first having to repeat it.
Research and product development need each other. People should be able to carry ideas between those jobs, change employers and start companies of their own.
Ambition needs money that can wait
Developing a product can require years of spending before it earns money. In July 2019, Microsoft announced a $1 billion investment and joint work on Azure supercomputing infrastructure. Microsoft supplied money and computing systems that OpenAI needed to grow. Microsoft’s announcement
American companies also receive a large share of global startup investment. U.S.-based firms received 60 percent of worldwide venture-capital investment in 2024, according to the National Science Board’s 2026 report. The figure describes where recipient companies were based, not the nationality of everyone supplying the money. The federal science indicators
Venture investors buy stakes in companies whose future is uncertain. That can give a business time to develop a product before conventional lenders would see a dependable borrower. It can also produce waste, inflated expectations and failures. That money can pay engineers and keep a company operating while it develops something customers might buy.
Public investment belongs in the success story
SpaceX’s history gives government an important role. NASA supported development through agreements tied to completed milestones, provided technical expertise and reviewed progress. It also became a customer: in December 2008, SpaceX received a separate award worth approximately $1.6 billion for 12 cargo missions. The Government Accountability Office’s review
Research funding reflects a similar combination. Businesses funded 75 percent of total U.S. research and development in 2024. For basic research—the pursuit of knowledge before a specific commercial application—the federal government was the largest funder, at 40 percent, followed by business at 34 percent. These percentages describe different pools of spending. The National Science Board’s figures
Companies need room to develop products and earn returns. Researchers also need funding for questions whose practical value may not be clear for years.
America gains when capable people can build here
A 2024 research paper reviewing immigrant entrepreneurship estimated that immigrants accounted for about a quarter of new U.S. businesses with employees. The estimate comes from earlier surveys and government records; it excludes businesses with no employees. The researchers’ paper
Attracting those people can be a national strength. So can educating Americans already here and making scientific, technical and business careers accessible to more of them. Both give more people a chance to become researchers, engineers and business owners.
Companies also benefit from partners abroad. Apple says Sony has made camera sensors for the iPhone since 2011. Japanese engineering can contribute to an American company’s success in Japan. Apple’s supplier account
The competition is growing
America does not lead every measure. The OECD’s March 2026 assessment estimated that China had caught up with and surpassed U.S. research-and-development spending in 2024 after adjusting for what money buys in each country. Using a different method to compare purchasing power can change that ranking. The OECD assessment
Nor does a successful American company automatically serve every American interest. Customers need meaningful choices. Public buyers need reliable performance. A supplier’s commercial power should not make its claims immune from examination.
OpenAI’s own research acknowledges that its systems can give confident false answers. Japan’s competition regulator examined Apple’s carrier agreements and closed its investigation after changes addressed its concerns. Success does not remove the need to check reliability or scrutinize a company’s terms of business. OpenAI on reliability, the Japanese regulator’s decision
We believe American exceptionalism is real. It is worth defending through investment in people and research, and through competition that gives the next company a fair chance against today’s leaders.
That means funding basic research before a profitable use is known, educating Americans for technical careers and welcoming people who want to do that work here. Private investment can then help turn promising ideas into products customers can choose.
Celebrating Apple, OpenAI and SpaceX should not mean protecting them from challengers. The freedom to replace a successful company with a better one is part of the strength we want America to keep.
About the reporting
This essay draws on government statistics, economic research and company records. The company histories illustrate our argument; the charts identify their separate measures and dates. Research checked October 26, 2026; no new interviews or survey were commissioned.
Sources and measurement notes
The company examples illustrate an argument; they are not a controlled comparison of countries. Venture-capital shares and basic-research funding shares measure separate pools of money. Purchasing-power comparisons of research spending depend on conversion assumptions.
