By Melia Russell,Stephen Council,Andy Kiersz,Geoff Weiss
Publication Date: 2026-06-08 09:00:00
The biggest names in AI are expanding their search for workers abroad as the talent war gets tougher.
Federal data shows Anthropic, OpenAI, and Nvidia filed more H-1B visa applications for new hires and renewals in the second quarter of fiscal 2026 than they did a year earlier, as other tech giants pulled back from the program.
The split points to a new reality in tech hiring. Companies are cutting jobs while concentrating talent in smaller, more specialized teams — or “pods,” as Meta calls them. They depend on a small pool of highly trained researchers, engineers, and infrastructure talent.
That can make foreign-born workers with specialized skills central to companies’ talent strategies, even as the visa process becomes harder to navigate.
Changes to the work visa program have made the process more costly and uncertain. New rules give applicants a better chance in the visa lottery if their employers plan to pay them higher salaries. The government has also imposed a temporary $100,000 fee on applicants living overseas.
That adds another hurdle at a time when companies across the tech industry are slowing hiring and conducting layoffs, while trying to do more with AI. The biggest AI companies, though, appear to be moving in the other direction.
Department of Labor data shows Anthropic had the biggest year-over-year percentage increase in certified applications among the seven companies reviewed by Business Insider. Its count rose to…
