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Delaware formed 334,461 new business entities in 2025, a 15.4% increase over 2024 and the highest annual total since 2021. The increase reversed three consecutive years of decline.
The rebound (particularly the 28.1% rise in corporation formations) is inconsistent with claims that Delaware's new-entity formation activity is undergoing a broad collapse. Formation totals do not, however, measure companies reincorporating out of Delaware, and they are not a net figure after dissolutions and departures.
All formation counts and total-register figures on this page come from the annual reports of the Delaware Division of Corporations, the state agency that maintains the register. Other contextual claims are sourced separately below.
| Year | Total formations | Change | LLCs | Corporations | LPs / LLPs | Statutory trusts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 336,407 | N/A | 247,003 | 62,510 | 24,588 | 2,306 |
| 2022 | 313,650 | −6.8% | 231,196 | 58,662 | 21,294 | 2,498 |
| 2023 | 298,165 | −4.9% | 218,708 | 59,729 | 17,173 | 2,555 |
| 2024 | 289,810 | −2.8% | 211,464 | 58,313 | 17,962 | 2,071 |
| 2025 | 334,461 | +15.4% | 235,393 | 74,716 | 21,189 | 3,163 |
Source: Delaware Division of Corporations annual reports, 2021–2025. Entity-type figures sum to the stated annual totals in every year shown.
Chart 1: Total new business entity formations in Delaware, 2021–2025. The Tesla marker is historical context only; annual totals cannot establish when during 2025 the increase began, and no causal relationship is implied. Source: Delaware Division of Corporations.
| Entity type | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporations | 58,313 | 74,716 | +28.1% |
| Statutory trusts | 2,071 | 3,163 | +52.7% |
| LPs / LLPs | 17,962 | 21,189 | +18.0% |
| LLCs | 211,464 | 235,393 | +11.3% |
Statutory trusts recorded the fastest percentage increase but added only 1,092 formations, compared with 16,403 additional corporations and 23,929 additional LLCs. In absolute terms the notable movement is in corporations, which grew at more than twice the LLC rate.
Chart 2: Year-on-year growth in formations by entity type, 2024 to 2025. Statutory trusts grew fastest in percentage terms but added only 1,092 formations, against 16,403 additional corporations. Source: Delaware Division of Corporations.
Through 2024 and 2025, several prominent companies considered or completed reincorporations out of Delaware, including Tesla's move to Texas, approved by shareholders on June 13, 2024. Those departures are real, but they measure a different phenomenon from the formation of new Delaware entities.
Writing for the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance in January 2026, Andrew Verstein concluded that the available data were "plainly incompatible with the most alarmist theories of DExit."
Using a version of the Corporate Census dataset ending in October 2025, Verstein found Delaware's growth to be absolute rather than merely relative: "The rest of the nation as a whole enjoyed no statistically significant increase in corporate formation, nor did any other state individually."
In that analysis, Delaware averaged 1,090 new corporations per week across 2020–24, and that figure rose by 309 per week in 2025, an increase he reports as statistically significant at the 99.9% level. That test applies to his weekly Corporate Census series, not to the Division of Corporations' annual totals above.
He also observes that "private companies represent the great majority of Delaware corporations – and about two thirds of Delaware's chartering revenue." Public-company reincorporations therefore give an incomplete picture of Delaware's corporate franchise.
Why the 2025 rise happened is not settled. Candidate explanations include Delaware's legislative reforms and broader post-election conditions, but the available data do not establish a cause. Verstein's own conclusion is that "the reasons for this rise remain debatable." This page does not assert a cause.
The Delaware Division of Corporations' annual reports and public entity-search records do not report the nationality or residence of beneficial owners. Those sources therefore cannot show how much of the 2025 increase came from founders outside the United States.
The public entity-search system does include a "residency" field, but that identifies whether the entity itself is domestic or foreign, it does not disclose the residence or nationality of the people who own it.
| Year | Total business entities |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 2,070,347 |
| 2024 | 2,157,482 |
| 2025 | 2,287,728 |
The 2023 and 2024 totals are repeated in subsequent Division of Corporations reports; the 2025 figure comes from the Division's 2025 annual report. The Division labels this measure "Total Business Entities."
Delaware passed two million registered entities in 2023 and reached roughly 2.29 million by the end of 2025.
Delaware House Bill 400, signed May 21, 2026, increased a range of fees and taxes administered by the Secretary of State and the Division of Corporations. The bill carries multiple effective dates. Most fee changes took effect August 1, 2026. Increases to partnership, limited-partnership and LLC annual taxes, and to annual taxes on registered series of LPs and LLCs, apply from January 1, 2026.
HB 400 did not change the standard fee for forming a domestic LLC, or the minimum fee for incorporating a basic domestic corporation. Under Delaware's August 2026 fee schedule, domestic LLC formation is $160 with 24-hour priority filing ($110 statutory filing fee plus $50 24-hour expedited fee). A one-page certificate of incorporation starts at $109, though the schedule notes this fee "varies based on stock", with a further $9 per additional page in county recording fees.
The increases fall on annual taxes and on filing, certification, record-search, expedited-service and dissolution-related charges.
Figures are taken from the published annual reports of the Delaware Division of Corporations for calendar years 2021 through 2025. "Formations" counts new business entities formed in the calendar year; it is not a net figure and does not subtract dissolutions or entities that left the state.
Entity-type breakdowns were checked against stated annual totals for all five years and reconcile exactly. Year-on-year percentages are calculated from the published figures.
Delaware does not publish owner nationality, residence, industry, or company size alongside these counts, so this page makes no claim about any of those dimensions.
StartFleet Team shares insights and guides on U.S. business, company formation, EINs, taxes, and banking for non-U.S. founders. Our guides are written by the team that handles these filings every day, so you get advice from people who do this work.
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