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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.
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.
Through 2024 and 2025, several prominent companies considered or completed reincorporations out of Delaware, including Tesla's move to Texas, approved by shareholders on 13 June 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.
Delaware passed two million registered entities in 2023 and reached roughly 2.29 million by the end of 2025.
Delaware House Bill 400, signed 21 May 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 1 August 2026. Increases to partnership, limited-partnership and LLC annual taxes, and to annual taxes on registered series of LPs and LLCs, apply from 1 January 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 remains $110. 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.
Elena Rossi leads corporate operations and client support strategies at StartFleet. Drawing on years of direct industry experience in business incorporation, entity structuring, and ongoing regulatory compliance, she ensures that founders have the reliable, up-to-date information they need to scale safely. Elena is passionate about removing the friction from small business growth. In her free time, she is an avid home chef and amateur landscape photographer.
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