Nvidia · Amazon · Donald Trump · OpenAI · Google · Microsoft · Fortune Technology
OpenAI and Nvidia CEOs didn’t flinch at Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee, and now they’re paying up as their application numbers
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When President Donald Trump suddenly imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas last year, leading AI companies didn’t flinch.
Key facts
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that it received 211,600 properly submitted applications for the 2027 H-1B allocation, down from 343,981 the year before, Business Insider reported
- When President Donald Trump suddenly imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas last year, leading AI companies didn’t flinch
- The frontier AI companies that publicly supported the move have sharply increased their foreign-worker filings, even at $100,000 a head—while the Big Tech giants with far larger workforces
- Nvidia’s certified H-1B applications rose 19% in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2025, according to a Fortune analysis
Summary
Eight months later, the visa fee has split the tech industry in two. Nvidia’s certified H-1B applications rose 19% in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2025, according to a Fortune analysis. Over the same stretch, Amazon—the country’s single largest H-1B sponsor—along with Google and Microsoft, posted steep declines, with smaller dips at Meta and Apple. For an AI lab racing to hire a few hundred elite researchers while sitting on billions in fresh capital, it’s a rounding error. It also helps that the fee is narrower than it first appeared to be.