'We need the smartest people': Nvidia, OpenAI CEOs react to H-1B visa fee

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/22/nvidia-openai-ceos-huang-altman-trump-h1b-visas.html

by rntn • 10 months ago

28 53 10 months ago

$100k is nothing to these companies.

This fee is a great compromise between the various parties fighting over this.

Putting a dollar amount on a disagreement is vastly easier for negotiations than words that can be interpreted depending on the time of day and week.

lawlessone• 10 months ago

I know for many reasons this won't work for all cases but couldn't they just set up offices etc in other countries aswell?

outsourcing is hardly something new.

pylua• 10 months ago

They will tax outsourcing next presumably.

colesantiago4• 10 months ago

Large FAANG tech companies are largely unaffected, cool.

Yet, I see some startups whining and about this on X and other places.

If you really want to say that you're "hiring the best" or you want to "hire the world class best talent" then you would hire the best american engineers or pay the fee for overseas talent.

No excuses.

I can't for the life of me understand why some startups say "we need skills" and "we only hire the best" then choose a way cheaper talent via H1B overseas rather than train or hire a an Ivy / Stanford recent CS grad.

cyanydeez• 10 months ago

H1B is a better economic leash than college debt.

Thats all.

colesantiago4• 10 months ago

Cool.

Then there should be no complaints from startups and founders about paying the $100K H1B fee for overseas talent.

taylodl3• 10 months ago

What - you expect them to admit they hire the mediocre? Anyway, the labor market is a market like any other - the consumer, in this case the employer, wants to get the best product (labor) at the cheapest price (salary). This isn't complicated.

Looking at this a little more deeply, the biggest issue is American labor is getting underpriced. What's causing that? Well, for starters there's the cost of an American education. The employee is looking at that as an investment and they expect a good ROI.

The second is inflated lifestyle expectations. That's been a big problem in America since the 90s. People aren't just living beyond their means, they're living well beyond their means - and just like the billionaires, they want more.

The result is we have recent college graduates expecting nice six-figure salaries. It's easy to offshore that. The growing trend now is to offshore to South America so you don't have to deal with the time zone shifts. You always have to remember there's someone a wee bit hungrier than you who is willing to work a wee bit more for a bit less. That's the person your employer wants.

This is what happens when you treat people like commodities, and you worship the market and money as your lord and savior.

colesantiago4• 10 months ago

All good.

Just don't say that you're hiring the best or the top 0.01% then, we all know where these ones are, they are either at FAANG or at a wholly $10B+ well funded AI lab.

"What - you expect them to admit they hire the mediocre?"

They don't have to, we know they are.

But now they might as well admit it since the ones that can't afford the fee are the ones crying about the H1B situation.

whatever13• 10 months ago

The Stanford PhDs also need H1B. So now the startups cannot hire them anymore.

colesantiago4• 10 months ago

So now the startups cannot hire them anymore

Too bad.

g42gregory2• 10 months ago

If they are PhDs in Computer Science, I believe they would qualify for EB-1.

anukin2• 10 months ago

Nope. Surprisingly eb1 have been awarded to a lot of models actors etc. A phD have to have certain qualifications before even attempting for eb1

bluesounddirect• 10 months ago

You are all being fleeced. This has nothing to do with India H1b visas or foreigners of any kind. This is Howard Lutnick , Formerly of Cantor Fitzgerrald / BGC Partners / Newmark Knight Frank setting up the biggest market manipulation you have ever witnessed. The hope is the jobs report will go south as a result of this and the other amusing games they are playing, lets install our buddy on the fed. Then the few in the know will swoop in and buy up stock in the resulting fire sale. As a former Cantor employee, Howie is as crooked as you can imagine.

ahmeneeroe-v2• 10 months ago

This is totally irrelevant, even if it's 100% true.

Den_VR2• 10 months ago

There’s about $7.3 Trillion dollars sitting in money market funds right now. How’s that work?

rayiner4• 10 months ago

These CEOs are correct. But that doesn’t mean the existing H1b program isn’t broken. 70% of H1bs go to India, while a negligible number go to other countries with good education systems. Is it believable that 70% of the “smartest people” are in India? https://fortune.com/2025/09/22/india-government-responds-tru...

India has about 70 million college graduates, which is a lot, but only a bit more than half have the skills to be employable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_... https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/degree-vs...

We already have evidence that Indian consulting agencies, among the largest recipients of h1bs, are discriminating against American employees: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/us_jury_cognizant_cas... https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s... https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/...

I can understand why maybe Japanese wouldn’t want to leave their homeland. But if these workers are the cream of the crop, the compensation in America should be such that we could hoover up top candidates from the former soviet union.

pedalpete2• 10 months ago

I think there are a few bits of context that should be considered.

India has 1/8th of the planets population. China is another 1/8th.

Obviously, Americans don't need H1B visas, and you are going to see more visa's coming from developing countries.

India's common language is English, they can easily communicate and get hired by American companies because of this.

Considering this, should it be a surprise they are such a significant part of the H1B program?

It isn't that 70% of the smartest people, though, they also have a great education system, it's 70% of the people that companies can assimilate into their environments are coming from India.

Perhaps the system could be overhauled to have an India specific visa and not group everyone in together?

Also, as a Canadian, another large immigrant population in the US, most of us don't come into the states under H1Bs because TN (and possibly other Visa's) are quite a bit easier.

rayiner4• 10 months ago

India has about 70 million college graduates, and gets about 70% of H1bs. The Philippines has 18 million a quarter as many as India), but accounts for only 1-2% of H1bs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_... https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/h-1b.... The Philippines is a former U.S. colony!

cs_throwaway• 10 months ago

I don’t understand why we cannot just blacklist these consulting companies as a first step. The 100K fee may effectively do that so it sounds good to me.

doron• 10 months ago

H1B visa should be reformed full stop. But this isn't reform, this is a shakedown. Enforcment will not be consistent. The CEOs who are ready and willing to pay the vig to the trump family and fellate the man will get exceptions.

taylodl3• 10 months ago

This is what corruption looks like and there's a large faction of Americans cheering this on in the woefully mistaken belief that they're ending corruption. That's the price we're paying for decades of declining public education.

RealityVoid• 10 months ago

I honestly don't think just education is to blame. I think it's _a part of it_ but tribalism and other stuff probably play a larger role. As proof look at the vast swaths of HN that are cheering on this. These are NOT stupid or uneducated people. They just view the world in a certain way. I am aware there are may sockpuppets and influence campaigns, but at least a sizeable part of them are real people. It is a mistake to consider them fake or stupid or uneducated. There's something more going on here.

rayiner4• 10 months ago

Almost every voter went to school during a decades-long period of improving education that was only recently derailed by covid: https://www.the74million.org/article/nations-report-card-two...

Also, Trump’s support disproportionately comes from white americans, who perform among the best in international assessments: https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/18bzkle/2022_pi.... They’re right between Korea and Japan.

unstatusthequo• 10 months ago

People are missing what this probably is. It’s a way to effectively tax tech companies who have been actively avoiding actual taxes for years. It’s at least plausible. The administration knows tech companies want smart people. Sometimes smart people need this visa. And now those who need the smart people have to pay to get that access. Or just hire them remote. But the. What will they do with all of that commercial office space? We’d have to walk back our RTO initiatives.

josephh• 10 months ago

Stick to O-1 visa if you truly want the smartest people.

nis0s• 10 months ago

Western nations are getting played by the whole immigration charade, at best it’s a useful tactic to rob brain and labor power from competing nations, but that doesn’t work when the money flows back out of your economy and to another. If your H1Bs are managers who create pipelines for outsourcing labor, then that’s just extracting tax benefits from your country while extracting labor benefits from another. It’s great for corporations and the country where that labor gets outsourced to, but not so much for the population of the tax-friendly nation. A way to offset the perverse incentives here would be to reward companies for each H1B they don’t hire. One also needs to be cognizant of the fact that competing high GDP nations will engage in any number of market tactics to prevent nationalist agendas from succeeding, but that’s just the game.

That all said, America needs to bring up its test scores, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor....

throwaway_hjuu• 10 months ago

I'm somewhat concerned that "smartest" is being conflated with "best at solving LeetCode problems and other time-limited interview exams". The American educational system doesn't focus on these types of Olympiad-style exercises.

I worry the pipeline is being tailored to pick up people with Olympiad-heavy educations at the expense of recruiting our local talent and creativity. And the more people are recruited from one such pipeline, the more biased its interview process becomes towards that style. (Not to say there's no overlap.)

potbelly83• 10 months ago

Yeah exactly, the people coming through these pipelines aren't the next batches of Moore's or Noyce's.

l0stinthe0zone• 10 months ago

Evidently the CEOs have no notion of value...

drekipus• 10 months ago

It's nice at the comments are full of pretty reasonable and balanced discussions.

It's unfortunate that everything gets disregarded as simply just racist / neo Nazi, The powers that be do not want you to discuss.

g42gregory2• 10 months ago

My understanding is that the smartest people are getting EB-1 and O-1 visas. We should definitely get them all.

What these CEOs are asking for, must be something else.

heavyset_go• 10 months ago

Sounds like they want O-1 or EB-1/2/3 visa holders and not H1-B visa holders, then. Those are the visas for exceptionally skilled/talented/educated/smart workers.

harshalizee3• 10 months ago

There's no such thing as an EB-1/2/3 Visa. These are filling classifications for green card processing. 80% of H1Bs fall into the EB-2 category when they file for PERM.

Gabriel545• 10 months ago

Where are you getting this information from? EB-1/2/3 are clearly visas issued to people [0]. It is true that many people may adjust status to EB-1/2/3 while already in the US in another status, but they are certainly visas still available to people. As I understand, due to the quota system it can be very difficult for folks born in certain countries to receive them (due to quotas) and they end up waiting for many years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB-1_visa

Gabriel545• 10 months ago

As many others have pointed out there remain EB-1 visas and O category visas. In particular the O visas (for "extraordinary ability") are not subject to any nationality quotas. If these companies are serious about hiring the "smartest people", why would they not fall into these categories? Just for fun, here is an example of a teenager who recently got an O-1 visa as a software engineer [0]. Surely the folks applying to OpenAI, Nvidia, etc. would have similar qualifications?

[0] https://x.com/Mokshit06/status/1955377782902624410

anukin2• 10 months ago

99 percent of people working in nvidia won’t even qualify for an o1 or eb1 visa. For OpenAI the number of people qualifying will be way higher.

Den_VR2• 10 months ago

You’re absolutely right! It only depends how disingenuous industry is when they say they need the smartest people. For the smartest people, a mere $100,000 is barely signing bonus territory. Meanwhile, despite O-visas being uncapped there’s only 35-40k per year being used… and on the greencard EB side those are maxed out, 140,000 authorized per year (260,000 were issued in 2021?).

'We need the smartest people': Nvidia, OpenAI CEOs react to H-1B visa fee

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